Brand loyalty in a pandemic looks a lot less loyally

New data from iBotta gives us more evidence that ‘loyalty’ is, well, less loyally.

iBotta — the couponing & cash-back shopping app — has collected a ton of data on people’s shopping habits. It’s good data for several reasons:

  • It’s not claimed or recalled behavior: people scan & upload their receipts.

  • It’s cross-retailer & cross-payment-type: all receipts get captured.

  • It’s a fairly representative group, spanning more HHI and demos than you’d think. 

  • It’s big: there are like 6MM monthly active users on iBotta.

They’ve just crunched some pandemic numbers on about 10MM receipts per week for the month of March.

A couple things weren’t too surprising, but now they’re quite quantified.

  • Total grocery purchases were up 43% as people ate & stayed at home more.

  • Average basket size was about 20% bigger as people bought more each trip.

But the interesting bit was about switching.

  • They saw an increase of over 25% in brand switching in March, across all categories.

  • And private label sales were up nearly 50%. 

One reason is clearly out-of-stocks, as people just can’t find their normal brand.

But another big reason was the coupons. For example, a third of shoppers switched peanut butter brands, and nearly all chose Skippy because there was a deal. (The choosy moms still chose Jif. JK LOL.)

Loyalty means sticking with things through thick & thin. You’re loyal to your dog, and vice versa. You’re loyal to your baseball team, even the Mariners. Maybe once in a blue moon you’re truly ‘loyal’ to a brand. That usually happens when that brand basically saved your life, and you swear you’ll never leave them.

But most people aren’t loyal; they’re habitual. They’re in brand ruts. And while ‘habitual customers’ sounds a lot less sexy than ‘loyal customers’, it’s the truth 98% of the time.

Ibotta: CPG Purchase Insights: Planning for Tomorrow. March 2020

Previous
Previous

Cadbury's pack redesign: a colossal waste?

Next
Next

What businesses will be ‘killed’ by the pandemic?