New brands: Near-instant loyalty

Abstract

It is widely thought that loyalty to successful new brands or line extensions evolves slowly. An unexpected but striking finding therefore is that loyalty to a new brand is nearly instant in some 20 cases examined so far: the new brands' average purchase frequency at launch is already ‘normal’, ie at the same level as a year or two later and also as that of competitive established brands. The finding was unexpected but now makes much sense with hindsight. More empirical work is in hand.