Over the last few weeks we have been talking to the people about wine, retail and beauty habits (not all at the same time!) and have found some interesting patterns.

These markets are similar in that people buy a repertoire of brands – the same group of brands are bought regularly albeit for different reasons and occasions.  A sauvignon blanc varietal might be the habit but within, there are 3 brands our wine drinkers grab depending on the occasion.   It works a bit differently in beauty.  There are usually 3 – 4 brands that our girls are buying but 2 brands might be their regular lippie brand and the other two only trusted for eye.

Bryon Sharp et al in his paper Purchase Loyalty is Polarised into either Repertoire or Subscription Patterns (2002) explains that there are two distinct markets.  The Subscription market where repeat purchases are not really made but the consumer ‘subscribes’ to them for long periods of time.  Thinking banking, utilities and even medical services

The repertoire market is based on the thought that a brand’s customers, on average, buy other brands as often.   In this market, brands tend to share their customers with other brands.

Our research as shown that this is true and we would add another level which is consumers actively built those repertories and then stick to them out of habit.

We are about to embark on a big challenge of adding a new retail store to an entrenched shopping habit.   We will be going out with our women, immersing ourselves in their lives to understand their portfolio shopping habit.  We will be looking for the cues and triggers to disrupt that habit.   We are going to understand how to awaken their habitual mind out of its autopilot behaviour to ‘consider’ and review an alternative.

More on that later … but what we have seen is that yes brands share customers and we agree with Sharp’s analysis that different kinds of markets exist but its negligent for marketers not to add the habit thinking to this view of the marketplace.

In some categories, consumers build up a core group of brands that they regularly buy AND they stick to out of habit.  You need to understand this habit to be a part of that repertoire.