Which customers to focus on?

I think that many of you remember charts with the results of consumer panels analysis. Quite often when we do such kind of analysis we rush to compare our brand with others in order to decide where we can fin… But what if we have just a look on our brand data?

First of all we will see obvious thing – the diverse profiles of our consumers. For instance, a lot of light buyers who we usually tend not to focus on. However,  “while these people are only occasional buyers of a brand, there are so many of them that they significantly contribute to sales volume” (Sharp, 2010).

I think that this might be something that you might from time to time oversee in your charts. But then, it was also found out that “these consumers buy infrequently because they don’t buy from the category very often, and they buy a number of different brands” (Sharp, 2010).

Really how often do you analyze the purchase frequency for your brand among different customers groups? I think that you usually use just an average number…

There is one academic law that is important to keep in mind and that is called the “law of buyers moderation“, that means that: “light customers might become heavier and heavy customers lighter” (Sharp, 2010).

So, I would advise you before making a strong targeting on your heavy consumers next time, to consider the percentage of your light customers, their purchase frequency and shifts in their behavior over time frame of a year.

As a recommendation on the communication strategy, focus on driving your brand penetration and reach of wide consumer audiences, because “when brands grow or decline there is a lot of change in their category penetration and little change in their purchase frequency“.

Sources: Sharp, B. (2010). How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know, Oxford University Press, Australia