Point of view: Serendipitous wobble

Byron Sharp

This article suggests that consumers have fairly stable brand loyalties, but that their purchasing behaviour can appear random as various serendipitous factors influence it.

Point of view: Serendipitous wobble

Byron SharpEhrenberg-Bass Institute

Consumers are pretty habitual, and their life situations are reasonably stable at least within the medium term, while the mental and physical availability of the brands they buy seldom changes dramatically. Consequently, their behavioural and attitudinal loyalties are pretty stable, even over many years.

That said, any person's mental and physical availability can vary a good deal from one purchase situation to another. There are thousands of situational factors that make it impossible for us to predict what exact brand someone will buy next, even when we have a very good...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands