The Ansoff Matrix has been widely taught as part of business education for over 50 years. It portrays growth options as a 2 x 2 matrix of options, with one axis representing products (existing / new) and the representing markets (existing / new). Two logical problems arise from the matrix. Both...

The concept of competitive advantage is argued to be not very useful to managers. At best it is an aspirational goal. Books that claim to present a route to competitive advantage give false hope – multiple competing firms in an industry cannot (each) realistically set out to build a...

Many studies discuss the proliferation of brand extensions (eg. Romeo, 1991; Han, 1998; Milberg, Whan Park and McCarthy, 1997), but there is a lack of academic research to show how common they really are. The present study documents the incidence of brand extensions in three geographic consumer goods...

This study examines whether changes in customer satisfaction scores, derived from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (www.acsi.org), are associated with changes in business revenue. The study analyses firms or brands in nine industries. For most of those industries, the study uses data for...

This paper examines three important issues in brand management – the route to brand growth, the idea that brands should be uniquely differentiated, and the building and maintenance of brand equity. The chapter presents evidence from numerous studies to show that:(1) the route to brand growth...

Analysis of category and brand purchase rates using Nielsen-Kilts 2014 panel data for the US show they closely fit the Negative Binomial Distribution. Data for Carbonated Soft Drinks, over the counter Pain Medication and Breakfast Cereal are used

When brands grow, what changes more: the number of households buying, or the average number of units they buy in the course of a year? We examined twelve US package-goods brands that exhibited high growth from 2005 to 2007 to find out the answer. For eleven of the twelve brands, growth was...

It is a common belief that users of a brand in one category are more likely to purchase brand extensions than non-users of the brand. This study examines whether extensions actually do facilitate purchase of the brand in a second category. We analyze one year of household purchasing data for...

This paper uses a sample of approximately 60,000 US households to document fundamental basket size patterns across a range of retailer types (e.g. grocery stores, convenience stores, and warehouse clubs), and studies them in relation to retailer performance metrics (unit sales and dollar...