Do Small Brands Follow the Law of Double Jeopardy?

Small brands are weird. How weird are they?

In the kombucha category, f’rinstance, big brands like GT’s have higher penetration AND higher ‘loyalty’.

This is the Law of Double Jeopardy. It’s an empirical regularity, with nice equations that predict it quite, uh, nicely.

Every category studied seems to follow the law of Double Jeopardy. (Including yours, I'd bet.)

But there’s some real wiggle in the pattern — very especially for small brands.

In this case, correlations between market share & penetration go from 91% for the whole category down to 16% for the little guys.

(And correlations between penetration & share of wallet (‘loyalty’) go from 80% for the whole category to, uh, -6.2% for the little guys.)

(That’s right: for the tiny brands, share & penetration are mildly negatively correlated.)

This doesn’t mean the law is ‘disproved’. It means other laws or ‘boundary conditions’ exist.

So, some lessons:

+ Know the laws of brand science.

+ Know the limits of the laws too.

+ Look for the wiggle! There’s big $$ there.