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This paper proposes and validates the negative binomial distribution (NBD) to predict the variation in repertoire size (the number of brands purchased by a consumer in a specific time period) within a category. From a managerial perspective, the variation is crucial for brand managers who would like to know the nature and intensity of competition that is facing their brands. Empirical findings across multiple datasets from UK consumer packaged goods demonstrate that the NBD model predicts variations in repertoire size very well in different time periods (1year, 18months and 3years), and different buyer groups (light and heavy category buyers). The paper then suggests a simple method to predict those who are brand exclusively loyal, those who are loyal to a few brands, and those who are diversified to buy multiple brands, based on very little information such as category and brand penetrations, using the parameters of the NBD model.

This study investigates the variation in brand growth and decline across many different product categories. It uses recent consumer panel data from the UK, covering 639 brands across 28 categories, including food, personal care, home care and pet food, over a five-year period from 2008 to 2012. Consistent with the literature, the study finds that most brands in the consumer packaged goods market are stationary, as only 14% of the brands change their market share by more than three points. However, the study discovers that some categories are more dynamic than others. The percentage of brands that change their share by more than three points is different across the categories, varying from 0% to 44%. The study further examines some potential factors that can affect the variation and finds that category penetration and purchase frequency have significant effects on the variation. The lower the category penetration and category purchase frequency, the lower the brand share stationarity. On the other hand, proportion of sales on promotion in the category and new SKU introductions do not have a significant effect on the variation.

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We analyse the purchasing of brands at both regular and promotional price over time. The goal is to better understand the extent of consumer deal-proneness. Our analysis shows most consumers buy brands on promotion at least some of the time, and the tendency to buy on promotion relates mostly to how much promotion is available in a category, suggesting little innate deal-proneness. The extent of promotion can be so high that as many as half of all brand buyers buy the brand solely when it is on promotion. However, this amount of on-deal buying is only very slightly higher than would be expected given the amount of promotion available. We find few buyers buy only on promotion. Promotion buyers of a particular brand also buy other brands on and off promotion more or less in line with the market share those other brands have at regular and promotional price. The three main implications are: (1) brand loyalty is still an important aspect of purchase, (2) a brand's normal-price buyers are a major source of its volume from price promotions, and (3) there is only a small effect of deal-proneness on promotion buying over and above that of promotion prevalence in a category.