OBSERVATIONS: Gaining 'Bonus Customers' by Stretching the Market

A brand that leads its product category in market share may profit from marketing only to its core segment if the product category is popular enough to become a 'social necessity' to others outside that core segment.

Gaining ‘Bonus Customers’ by Stretching the Market

Betsy D. Gelb University of Houston

When an 86-year-old woman bought a pair of Nikes recently, her very first athletic shoes, anyone might have guessed that she had taken up walking, or some other mild form of exercise self-prescribed or suggested by her doctor. Alternatively, it might have appeared that Nike had begun to target nonathletes either by designing shoes particularly for that group or by advertising specifically to them the merits of their current product line. In fact, neither was the case: this particular woman bought the shoes because she was...

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