Launching a new product is costly, and failure is likely. Although brands continue to launch new products, there is no clear guidance about when or how to detect the survivors. This study compares the performance of 7,195 survivor (reported sales three years after launch) and 5,294 failed (reported no sales after the first year) line extensions (LEs) to detect patterns in how survival is linked to early indicators.

Victory, K., Romaniuk, J., Nenycz-Thiel, M., Tanusondjaja, A., Dawes, J. (2025). "How to identify line extensions that survive". Forthcoming in the Journal of Product and Brand Management.

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New product introductions, particularly line extensions (LEs), are common in consumer goods categories with no guarantee for success. Despite their commonality, brands that introduce LEs lack benchmarks about what success to expect. This study investigates the success of 36,994 LEs in each quarter for the first three years after introduction. Four indicators are calculated using consumer panel data to benchmark how long LEs survive (failure rate), how competitive they are in the category (market share) and how they are adopted by category buyers (penetration and repeat buyer rate). This research can help guide new product investment decisions because it provides context on what is feasible to achieve. Four market success measures are used, a departure from past benchmarking research which uses practitioner evaluation on metrics seldom used in practice. We provide 4 guidelines about when and how to measure LE and new product success more broadly.

Victory, K., Tanusondjaja, A., Nenycz-Thiel, M., Romaniuk, J. (2024). “Are there generalizable patterns in line extension performance”. Forthcoming in the Journal of Product & Brand Management.

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We extend the utility of Goodhardt’s NBD-Dirichlet model to demonstrate how it can be used to support portfolio decisions relating to retail assortments. The approach is based on analysing polarisation of loyalty, obtained via a transformation of the model’s S parameter, to investigate loyalty to attributes. Prior research on loyalty to attributes suffers from limitations of method or application, so we develop a full treatment of the statistical basis and analytical methods required for ongoing research in this area. We then demonstrate the utility of our approach through application to four sub-categories of coffee in the USA over two years. Importantly, we reveal the specific attribute levels (features) that generate the least and most loyalty, and show how this, when combined with market share, can be used to respond to the strategic context. Specifically, those attribute levels with low loyalty may be more suitable for seasonal or limited time offers for which maximising short-term custom is more important than repeat purchase; conversely, attribute levels with high loyalty may be more suitable for achieving long-term growth of brand share. In both cases attribute levels with higher market share are preferable.

Driesener, C., Rungie, C. and Wright, M. (2021) "Dirichlet Implications for Portfolio Management". Forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Behaviour.

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This study aims to explore how common new product failure is in consumer packaged goods (CPG) categories and investigate the conditions in which the new product failure rate varies. This study analyses 83,719 new Stock Keeping Units (SKUs), which were introduced over eight years (2002–2009) across 31 CPG categories in the United States. Failure is the permanent cessation of sales, which is measured in consumer panel data. We find that one in four (25%) new SKUs are no longer bought one year later—a rate that increases to approximately 40% two years’ post-launch. New SKU failure was more likely for new launches that were introduced into higher revenue categories and by smaller share parent brands. Our findings can be used as a resource to aid marketing practitioners’ understanding regarding how common failure is for new CPGs and when there is greater associated risk.

Victory, K., Nenycz-Thiel, ., Dawes, J., Tanusondjaja, A. (2020) "How common is new product failure and when does it vary?". Forthcoming in Marketing Letters.

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The aim of this study is to extend an existing method to untangle the effect of taste (intrinsic) versus label information (extrinsic) on repurchase in a new-to-wine market. Results from a repeated discrete choice experiment (DCE) conducted before and after tasting a set of wines in China are compared with a control group that only performed the repeated DCE, but not the informed tasting. Fundamental differences were observed in choice response for the control group between the two sets, indicating a low stability of preferences and low test-retest reliability. There was a narrow range of responses for both the control and test groups, with an unusually high number of random choices recorded. The effect of extrinsic and intrinsic product attributes could not be determined. The method of combining discrete choice and tasting should be reassessed first in an established market. Other recommendations for conducting similar research in developing markets are discussed.

Williamson, P.O., Francis, L., Mueller-Loose, S. and Lockshin, L. (2017) "Predicting wine repurchase: a case of low test-retest reliability in China", International Journal of Market Research

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Two studies provide estimates of the upper range of incidence of first-time (brand and UPC) purchases, claimed reasons for these new purchases, and consumer profiles of first-time brand buyers. Study 1 analyzes three years of transaction data from 10,000 loyalty card members; Study 2 reports on 510 mall-intercept interviews in two different stores. Despite the vast range of items available in modern supermarkets, new brand purchasing is not particularly common: new brands constitute about 5% of items in a basket and are purchased on about 1/3 of shopping trips. The majority of these new-to-consumer purchases have been prompted by in-store stimuli (noticing new brands, price promotions and stock-outs). Interestingly, demographic characteristics between first-time and existing buyers did not differ. Providing further evidence to the habitual nature of grocery shopping, the results indicate limited opportunities to expand/change consumer repertoires suggesting the need for ongoing marketing activities for FMCGs.

Keywords: shopping, first-time brand purchase, brand switching, in-store choices. Paper type:

Research paper

Bogomolova, S., Anesbury, Z., Kapulski, N., Lockshin, L. & Bogomolov, T. (2017). “Exploring the incidence and antecedents of buying an FMCG brand and UPC for the first time.” Journal of Retailing & Consumer Services: 1-28.

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We investigate whether doctors who adopt a new drug in its first year on the market tend to be heavier category prescribers. Early studies of pharmaceutical prescribing and packaged goods purchasing suggest that innovators are heavier category users; however, this finding has received little attention and the evidence remains sparse. We examine the adoption of 36 new drugs by doctors in the United Kingdom and find that, on average, the prior category prescribing rate of innovators is about 50% higher than that of non-innovators.

Stern, Philip; Wright, Malcolm (2015). "The adoption of new prescription drugs is strongly associated with prior category prescribing rate". International Journal of Research in Marketing: doi:10.1016/j.ijresmar.2015.12.002. 0167-8116.

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New brand launches are risky endeavours for marketers, as many fail to attract a sustainable customer base. This research examines the retrospective buying behaviour of customers acquired by a new brand, both at category and brand level. We examine new brand launches in six packaged goods categories in the UK, across a wide range of brand and category conditions, including premium brands and private labels. The results show that in the pre-launch period, buyers of a new brand are more likely to have been heavier (more frequent) category buyers and, where applicable, heavier buyers of a parent brand. However, despite disproportionately drawing from heavy category buyers, the buyers of new launches tend to only become light brand buyers. This suggests that new brands are more likely to ‘slip’ into the repertoire of heavy category or parent brand buyers. This research contributes to our understanding of repertoire formation in packaged goods categories. It also has implications for the pre-testing of new launches and the scheduling of marketing activities.

Tanusondjaja, A, Trinh, G, and Romaniuk, J (2016), Exploring the past behaviour of new brand buyers, International Journal of Market Research, vol. 58, no. 3 : pp. 401-420.

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New brand launches are risky endeavors for marketers, as many fail to attract a sustainable customer base. This research examines the buying behavior of customers acquired by a new brand and revisits the theoretical norms of the NBD-Dirichlet model benchmarks. Investigating 40 new brand launches in the UK, across a wide range of brand and category conditions, we find that in the first 12 months, new launches have more, but less loyal buyers than expected from NBD-Dirichlet benchmarks, irrespective of type, price point, or the sales gained by the new launch. Further we find exploratory evidence that new buyers of brands have weaker associations than existing buyers. We propose that the combination of the new experience that lacks distinctiveness in encoding means that the experience of buying the new brand creates weaker memory traces in new buyers and that these buyers need additional marketing reinforcement to consolidate the memory of buying the brand to establish the brand in their ongoing repertoire.

Trinh, Giang, Jenni Romaniuk, and Arry Tanusondjaja (2015), “Benchmarking Buyer Behavior Towards New Brands,” Marketing Letters, 27 (4), 743-52.

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