The usability of mental market share as a KPI for mental availability
Published on 19 05 2020Article Mark Vroegrijk – Senior Methodologist
Two theories for making brand choices
Two scientists at the Australian Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk, have completely how many marketers view brands and how consumers interact with these brands. Central to Sharp and Romaniuk’s theories on brand growth, is the relationship between the concepts of category entry points (CEPs) and mental availability. CEPs provide more clarity about how consumers handle the products within a category – they say something about the motives behind consumption (the why?), but also the situations in which this happens (where, with whom, when?). The more CEPs a consumer links to a brand, the greater the mental availability of this brand, and the greater the chance that the brand will be chosen in a purchasing situation. After all, a brand that is connected to more CEPs will be considered in a larger number of potential purchasing situations. And it is also more likely that the brand will be the best match for that specific purchasing situation of the consumer.
Such a view on brand choice seems to apply to product categories that are mainly emotionally charged (such as clothing) and / or have a relatively low degree of consumer involvement (such as FMCG). In these types of categories, decisions are often made on the basis of ’heuristics’: simplified rules of thumb to simplify the choice between brands considerably. The theory behind mental availability, where the brand that comes to mind the strongest wins, fits in seamlessly with this.
To study the role of mental availability, DVJ Insights conducted an internal study using data collected for a category within service. This dataset covers 4 countries (Belgium, Ireland, United Kingdom and Switzerland) and a total of 14 different brands, with weekly data (both on an individual and aggregated level) over time periods ranging from approximately one to two years.