Category Entry Points

Definition

Category Entry Points (CEPs) refers to the thoughts people have at the times when they transition into being a category buyer, and therefore a potential brand buyer.
CEPs come from both the buyer’s internal feelings and motivations, and their external environment (places, people).
These CEP thoughts act as retrieval cues to shape the options that are mentally available to buy at that time.

Key Findings

To remind us of the broad range of CEP sources, we use the W’s to classify CEPs: Why, When, While, Where, with/for Whom, with What and hoW feeling.
Identifying CEPs: Use the W’s; allow for variation across category buyers; and allow for variation within each category buyer.
Big brands don’t ‘own’ CEPs, they have widespread coverage across CEPs and category buyers.

Best Practice

Deep Dive into Category Points, 2021
Report 16: Mental Availability – Implications for brand management
Report 33: Mental Availability? What it is and why it matters

Reports (4)

Reports

Showing 4 results

How Double Jeopardy patterns in CEP Usage help you make smarter CEP choices

Report 127
May 2024

Not all Category Entry Points (CEPs) are equally valuable. The more often a CEP occurs, the greater the likelihood that category buyers will use this cue to think of brands in buying contexts. However, commonality has two dimensions: how many category buyers experience the CEP at all (CEP penetration) and how often the CEP is experienced (CEP frequency). Which matters most? In general the penetration of CEP usage among the wider category buyer market can be used to determine the attractiveness of a CEP for a brand to message and product portfolio development.

Report 124
September 2023

In this report we investigate the idea of CEP ownership. We find that unique links between a brand and a CEP in category buyer memory are rare as most category buyers link multiple brands to each CEP. There is no evidence that owning or strong positioning on CEPs is linked to brand success.

REPORT FOR THE B2B INSTITUTE
July 2022

In B2B, as B2C, the evidence suggests the path to company growth requires building mental and physical availability . Mental Availability is about being easily thought of in buying situations, while Physical Availability is about being easy to buy. Category Entry Points (CEPs) are the cues that category buyers use to access their memories when faced with a buying situation and can include any internal cues (e.g., motives, emotions) and external cues (e.g., location, time of day) that affect any buying situation. While each category buyer and each buying situation is unique, there are common recurring themes which we call CEPs.
This paper explains why CEPs are important, as well as how to identify, prioritise and build CEPs. This paper also shows how to turn CEPs into Mental Availability Metrics to measure effectiveness over time.

REPORT FOR THE B2B INSTITUTE
May 2021

The Laws of Growth, such as Double Jeopardy, show us acquisition of new customers is essential to growing a B2B business. The next question is how does a B2B company acquire new customers? This paper investigates the extent to which the negative attitudes to buying a B2B brand (referred to as brand rejection) hamper B2B customer acquisition.