Do brands grow via loyalty or penetration?

It’s an age-old debate: acquire new customers, or try to get current customers to buy more?

Let’s look at Dove, one of the very very few global grocery brands to post 10 straight years of growth.

@Kantar found that from 2012 to 2021, average annual purchase frequency went up from 3.9 to 4.5, and number of buyers jumped from 350 million to 450 million. That’s a 14% increase in frequency and a 30% increase in number of buyers.

There are three important points from this story:

1. Frequency and penetration are positively correlated; they move nearly in lock-step. This turns out to be a pretty universal pattern. Like, very very universal.

2. Penetration grew TWICE as much as frequency. This is also a near-universal pattern (penetration can be up to 15X more important than frequency for brand growth).

3. Even when frequency dropped (2016, 2020), the gains in penetration meant the brand grew.

This is just one brand, but the story has been repeated across markets, categories, and brands around the world.

A couple of big lessons then:

🍊 Focus on penetration for growth.

🍊 Realize that frequency will naturally grow in lock-step as you get more buyers.

🍊 Give up the fairy tale of having a small number of highly-loyal buyers.

🍊 Learn more about the Laws & Levers of Brand Science ;-) .