Background

A common marketing objective, irrespective of brand size, is to stimulate brand growth. Research into patterns of brand growth shows that this comes primarily from bringing more buyers to the brand, through investments in Mental and Physical Availability.

Category Entry Points (CEPs) are key brand memories that underpin Mental Availability. These attributes help the brand to be thought of by category buyers across different category buying contexts.

This study extends prior research into buyer behaviour patterns by examining how brands should build CEP linkages. We provide evidence about two common marketing conundrums:

• Should a brand build a stronger position on a few key CEPs, or should it aim for wider, fresher memory networks?
• Should a brand try to build unique links to CEPs or accept that mental competition is a necessary challenge?

Comparing Two Brand Strategies: Positioning/Ownership versus Mental Availability

If you want to build a brand, you must focus your efforts on owning a word in the prospects’ mind. A word nobody else owns.

Al Ries

The word positioning is common in marketing vocabulary. Marketers often refer to ‘building a strong brand position’ when setting objectives; with the absence/decline of a strong position often blamed for poor performance.

But rarely do we stop to think: What does being ‘strongly positioned’ look like empirically? How would we know if a brand has a strong position?

In practice, positioning means to select a specific attribute (or small subset of attributes) to emphasise for a brand. Indeed, advocates of brand positioning strategies council against trying to position on too many attributes warning that “the results can often be a fuzzy, confused image” (Aaker and Shansby, 1982, p. 57).

A brand’s position is often the ‘rallying cry’ that unites all aspects of the brand’s marketing strategy. The brand’s position becomes the dominant message in marketing activities aimed at category buyers, strengthening the link between the brand and the positioning attribute(s) in category buyer memory.

Over time, the brand becomes strongly linked to that attribute. Examples include Volvo and safety, Subway and freshly prepared food, or Dettol and germ protection.

The disadvantages of strong brand positioning are rarely mentioned. Being known for one attribute might lead to doubts about performance in other attributes (specialist vs generalist dilemma). And, there could be an opportunity cost in only focusing on one attribute: what happens to the attributes a brand decides not to build in category buyer memory? For example, if Subway only advertises ‘eat fresh’, it might miss an opportunity when someone is looking for a quick service food option ‘to treat themselves’. This leads us to the Mental Availability/Category Entry Point approach to brand memory building, which is about scale across a range of relevant brand attributes, rather than putting all your eggs in one basket.

Category Entry Points (CEPs)

Category Entry Points (CEPs) are the thoughts that shape the brands that are mentally available to the buyer in each buying context. CEPs can be internal thoughts, such as emotions and motivations; as well as external influences like the weather or other people. This variety is captured by the W’s framework (why, with who, when etc.) which helps to organise CEPs thematically and ensure no major areas are neglected.

CEPs are based on the Associative Network Theories of Memory. Retrieval of an item depends on two factors. These factors are (1) the presence of a link to the retrieval cue used to access memory; (2) the freshness of this link relative to other items linked to the retrieval cue. If we replace ‘item’ with ‘brand’, ‘retrieval cue’ with ‘Category Entry Points’ and ‘other items’ with ‘competitor brands’, this describes the basic thought processes that occur at the start of any purchase.

In their role as retrieval cues, CEPs shape the set of brands that are retrieved from category buyer memory. As such, they are an important part of the brand’s associative network. This memory network is built and maintained via direct experience with the brand, marketing communications, word-of-mouth, and in some categories, observation of other people’s brand encounters.

In the absence of limitless advertising budgets brands probably have to make some choice regarding which memory structures (i.e., CEPs) to invest in. An extreme, but common perspective is to focus on “ownership”, i.e., to try to choose one CEP to build into a strong brand position. This, of course, neglects the middle ground, which is to build as many commonly used CEPs as possible, given the available budget.

In this report we empirically test for the presence of CEP “ownership” which is the outcome of a positioning strategy, and the relationship between owning a CEP and being a big brand in a category.

Research Method

Data for this research spans CPGs, durables, services, and B2B contexts across 18 countries, 1,205 brands and 1,851 CEPs. All studies followed the same protocol when choosing brands to be included in the survey. Where feasible, all brands in the category were included. In instances where the category had too many brands to allow this, the survey includes all the big and medium brands plus a selection of smaller players (in line with the recommendations from the book Better Brand Health).

Each study follows the Institute’s two-stage process to identify and prioritise CEPs. First we administer the Institute’s CEP identification survey to a diverse sample of typically around 60 category buyers. This survey is designed to capture category buyers’ thoughts and feelings about their interactions with the category. The initial list of CEPs from these responses, is then supplemented by knowledge from marketers within the category.

Stage 2 is for CEP prioritisation, which involves a quantitative survey administered to a larger, representative sample of category buyers (typically around 400 people). The data from this stage helps to determine the priority CEPs for the target brand(s) to message. We draw upon this Stage 2 data for the analysis throughout this report.

Ownership Test 1: Unique Brand Associations

At least as far back as Aaker and Keller in the 1990s, the idea that brands benefit from unique associations has fuelled the objective to ‘own’ brand attributes. Keller (1993, pg. 4) claims: 

Brand associations may or may not be shared with other competing brands. The essence of brand positioning is that the brand has a sustainable competitive advantage or “unique selling proposition” that gives consumers a compelling reason for buying that particular brand.

For an individual category buyer, a brand’s ownership of an attribute is evident if the brand is the only one linked to that attribute in that buyers’ memory. For instance, Volvo has a unique linkage with the attribute of ‘safety’ if it is the only car brand that you retrieve from memory for this cue. The obvious benefit of this resulting unique association is that when ‘safety’ is activated in your memory, only Volvo can ‘come to mind’.

We investigate whether building a unique brand association is necessary for brand success. Drawing upon a sample from our large database of CEP studies, we quantify the incidence of category buyers holding unique associations about brands. For example, what proportion of credit card customers only associate Mastercard with the CEP When someone travels overseas. We document the extent to which CEP brand links can be classified as:

• None – where none of the brands are linked to the CEP
• Shared – where multiple brands are linked to the CEP (e.g., Mastercard and Visa)
• Unique – where only (any) one brand is linked to the CEP (e.g., Mastercard)

Across a subset of 616 brands and 1,105 CEPs in 34 categories, the results show Shared Brand-CEP associations is the most common category, with on average over half (56%) of category buyers having multiple brands linked to a CEP. A further 13% of category buyers have No brands linked to a CEP, while only 32% of category buyers have a Unique link between a brand and a CEP (see Figure 1). As we discuss later, this 32% is spread across a number of brands in any category, which means any one brand has only a few category buyers with unique links.

These findings differ slightly from prior Uniqueness research (Gaillard & Romaniuk, 2007). The proportion of No brand associations is lower (33% versus 13%), while the proportion of Unique associations is higher (21% versus 32%). This is due to the different types of attributes included in each piece of research. The original 2007 research used a more general battery of attributes, which included low response personality traits such as lively, smart and reserved (see also Romaniuk & Ehrenberg, 2012). Here we omit these and only use CEPs that have been detected as relevant for each category (via the Stage 1 research), so we have fewer ‘no attributes’ but this 20 percentage point difference is distributed across both Shared and Unique categories.

Figure 1: Brand-CEP link patterns across different category types

On average, only one in three category buyers have unique CEP links. Most people have multiple brands linked to CEPs.

Unique links and the single brand

While one in three category buyers with unique links seems like a lot, these unique associations are not just for one brand but are instead distributed across multiple brands in the category. On average, brands have only 2% of category buyers uniquely linking their brand to any specific CEP.

To ensure we had not missed cases of CEP ownership, we identified the maximum value of unique ownership for each CEP. Only 2% of CEPs had more than 20% of the category buyers with a unique link to a brand (Figure 2). No brands had over 50% unique links to a CEP. The vast majority of CEPs tested (71%) had fewer than 10% of category buyers with a unique link to a specific brand. Therefore, owning a CEP by having lots of category buyers uniquely linking that brand to that CEPs is rare for all brands, including big brands.

Figure 2: Maximum value of unique CEP ownership

Unique links between brands and CEPs by a substantial proportion of the category buyer population are rare.

Even big brands have few unique linkages

We also checked for patterns related to the size of each CEP and the size of the brand. Bigger share brands had an average proportion of unique links (3%) compared to lower share brands (<2%). Even brands with more than 80% penetration managed only 5% of unique links to CEPs. 

Regardless, the very low number and proportion of brands with unique links to CEPs in category buyer memory has a clear implication. Aiming to be the only brand linked to a CEP by category buyers is not a realistic objective for any brand, nor is it necessary to be a big brand. Category buyers typically have multiple brands linked to any given CEP. This means mental competition is unavoidable due to how our memories work.

Ownership Test 2: Strong Brand Positions

Next, we address the question of brand “ownership” of a CEP by testing if bigger brands are more strongly positioned on a single CEP than smaller brands. We contrast this with the idea that a brand sets itself up for a greater chance of success if it aims to build wider, fresher memory networks. This would mean bigger brands have more mental advantages than smaller brands, rather than just one very strong mental advantage.

A simple calculation¹ provides an expected score for each brand on each CEP attribute. We then use this as a benchmark to detect if a brand scores higher or lower than expected on an attribute (for more on this see Romaniuk & Sharp, 2000). When a brand scores sufficiently higher than expected (+5 percentage points or more), this is referred to as a Mental Advantage. A Mental Advantage means the brand has a greater chance of being evoked in memory when that CEP is used as a retrieval cue in a buying context.

In analysis across 62 data sets, we found:

Categories rarely have brands with strong positions

We classified a brand as ‘owning’ a CEP if it reaches a mental advantage of 20 percentage points or more on a given CEP. For example, if a brand is expected to be linked to a CEP by 65% of category buyers, but the proportion with an association is found to actually be 85%, then the brand has a +20 percentage point mental advantage on that attribute. It is reasonable to then claim a brand is strongly positioned on that CEP, relative to other brands, as 20% more category buyers than expected have a chance of thinking of that brand when that CEP is the cue.

Across the 616 brands and 1,105 CEPs in 62 data sets, we find only 111 cases of a brand having a mental advantage of 20 percentage points or more. These spanned 75 brands, or 12% of those in the research. Six in ten categories (59%) had no brands with a +20 percentage point Mental Advantage.

Most big brands are not strongly positioned on any CEP

Each brand was ranked² based on their sales penetration, from 1st (the biggest brand) to the lowest rank according to the number of brands in the study³. Only 15% of the first ranked brands (n=62) were strongly positioned on at least one CEP. Further only 37% of the strong positions were located amongst the top 3 brands (Table 1). Indeed, one in four of the strongly positioned CEPs were located in brands ranked 11th or lower.

Therefore, the vast majority (88%) of larger brands are not strongly positioned on – or ‘own’ – any CEP. Knowing the brand has a strong position on a CEP is not very helpful in predicting its brand penetration rank. Instead, as well as being rare, strongly positioned CEPs are distributed across brands of all sizes.

Table 1: Strong positions (> +20p) on a CEP by brand rank (n=1,218)

Strongly positioned CEPs are distributed across brands of all sizes.

Bigger brands have more Mental Advantages

Next, we widen the lens to include any Mental Advantage of 5pp or more, which is the normal Institute threshold for a brand to be classed as having a Mental Advantage on a CEP. We compare the distribution in the number of Mental Advantages for a 1st ranked brand with a 10th⁴ ranked brand, across all categories.

We find that rarely do bigger or smaller brands have only one Mental Advantage (9% and 13% of brands, respectively). However, smaller brands are more likely than bigger brands to have no Mental Advantages (56% versus 19%) (Figure 3). Bigger brands generally have more Mental Advantages than smaller brands. Market leaders average four Mental Advantages, while 11th or lower ranked brands average only one Mental Advantage (Figure 4).

Figure 3: Incidence of Mental Advantages across bigger and smaller brands

Smaller brands are more likely than bigger brand to have no Mental Advantages.

Figure 4: Average number of Mental Advantages by brand size across all categories

Bigger brands have more Mental Advantages than smaller brands, on average.

This pattern of bigger brands having more Mental Advantages holds across different categories; including CPG brands (Figure 5), B2B brands, service brands, and durable brands (Figure 6). We draw on penetration to group brands now because we are working with brands of similar purchase frequencies.

Figure 5: Mental Advantages by brand size across CPG category types

Bigger CPG brands have more Mental Advantages than smaller CPG brands.

Figure 6: Mental Advantages by brand size across B2B, service and durable categories

Larger durable and B2B brands have more Mental Advantages than smaller durable and B2B brands. All service brands have a low number of Mental Advantages.

Bigger brands are rarely strongly positioned on particular CEPs, but are more likely to have more Mental Advantages than smaller brands.

 

Summary of Key Findings and Implications

There is no evidence that owning or strong positioning on CEPs is linked to brand success

We investigated CEPs to determine if there is any evidence to support a desire to “own” a single CEP. We found that it is rare for category buyers to associate a single brand with a CEP, and very few brands have an “ownership” position on a single CEP.

Therefore, the question is not whether to own a CEP (and by virtue which to own), but rather how can the brand more successfully compete on a wide range of relevant CEPs.

Brands need to build broader, wider networks of CEPs

Our research shows that larger market share brands have broader CEP networks. That is, not only more linkages, but Mental Advantages with more CEPs.

Therefore, we recommend focusing brand building efforts across a range of commonly used CEPs, rather than limiting the brand to a space you think you may be able to own. This is why a key output of our CEP contract research projects are a “long-short list” of CEPs that are advantageous messages for a brand to build in the long-term.

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¹ See Appendix A for an example of this calculation.

² This ensures bigger brands in infrequently bought categories, who have lower penetration than bigger brands in other categories because of the category purchase rate, are not combined with smaller brands with a similar penetration simply because they are in a more frequently bought categories. This would occur if we grouped brands just based on penetration scores.

³ The number of brands in each rank varies as two or more brands are sometimes evenly ranked.

⁴ 10th brand is chosen because all studies had at least 10 brands, so the same ranked brand could be included from every dataset.

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Appendix A: Mental Advantages and Disadvantages Calculation Example

We surveyed n=820 social media users and asked “Which social media brands, if any, do you associate with each statement?”. Respondents could select multiple, one, or no brands, depending on their individual associative memory networks. Below we share a subset of this data.

Table 1: Actual Values, Ordered and Summed

Actual CEP-brand linkages. E.g., 382/820 social media users associate TikTok with ‘To become famous’.

We calculate an expected linkage score for each brand on each attribute by conducting a chi-square analysis on the observed values (Column Sum * Row Sum / Total Sum). This analysis draws upon two key patterns found in image data: the size of the brand and the relevance (prototypically) of the CEP to the category.

Table 2: Expected Values

Expected CEP-brand linkages. e.g., based on the size of the brand, and the relevance of the CEP to the social media category, we expect to see only 145/820 category users associating TikTok with ‘To become famous’.

We convert the differences between the Actual and Expected values into percentage points. A score of +5 percentage points or higher indicates a brand has a Mental Advantage on that CEP as more category buyers than expected have an association between the two items. Likewise, a score of -5 percentage points or lower indicates the brand has a Mental Disadvantage on that CEP as fewer people link the brand and attribute than expected.

Table 3: Deviations – Mental Advantages and Disadvantages as % of sample

Mental Advantages and Disadvantages as percentage point differences between actual and expected values. E.g., TikTok has a very large Mental Advantage on ‘To become famous’ driven by the notably higher number of category users with this association.

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