This book deals with the repeat-buying of frequently-bought branded
goods. In this chapter, we first outline some general aspects of buyer
behaviour in 5 1.2 and then consider the data-collection or measurement
procedures most commonly used in 5 1.3, the general choice of
analysis-variables in 5 1.4, and some specific indices of repeat-buying in
5 1 S. The crucial point that regularities occur in consumers’ observed
repeat-buying is introduced in Chapter 2, together with theoretical formulations
to summarise and interrelate these regularities, and a first
example of a practical application of the results. Both theory and applications
will be more fully developed in Parts II to IV.
Consumer behaviour is mainly studied by manufacturers of the goods
that are consumed. Initially, a manufacturer tends to be productionorientated
and thinks mainly in terms of his sales: so many tons of X,
so many millions of cases of Y, so many pounds or dollars worth of 2 -
and sales perhaps going up or going down. Then comes some realisation
that individual and highly varied people are involved who buy or use his
product (the marketing or consumer-orientated approach). Data are
therefore collected which allow him to separate sales into two components
- numbers of buyers and how much they buy. There comes also
the discovery that some consumers buy the brand or product in question
far more frequently than do others (with a small proportion of
buyers usually accounting for the bulk of sales), and that consumers
may vary in their needs and habits (consumer profiles and market segmentation).
The data also show that buyers of a brand do not necessarily satisfy
all their needs through this one brand, but tend to buy other brands
as well - one of several points first documented in some quantitative
form in Brown’s pioneering articles on brand-loyalty many years ago
[Brown 195 11. And it also appears that a brand does not always keep
all its buyers: perhaps only 60% of the people who bought it last month
buy it again this month. Such a loss of repeat-buyers might seem to
imply that only 36% of last month’s buyers would buy it again next
month (60% of 60%), and only about 20% the month after that, and so
on.