Predicting Category Growth from Quarterly Penetration

Faced with persistent brand share equilibrium, managers now consider category expansion as a brand growth strategy. At present there is little evidence available about the incidence and nature of category dynamics in mature markets, and therefore little to inform decision-making. We report findings from a large-scale study of household penetration change in nearly 400 established consumer packaged goods categories, and show (1) almost two thirds remain near stationary (2) categories over the mean size of 21% are more stable, with lower incidence of increase (or decrease) and relatively small increments (3) smaller categories (under 10% penetration) are extremely volatile, and average change is up to thirteen times greater. Rate of change is closely linked to initial category size, and equally distributed between increase and decrease. The implications for management seem to be that persistent category expansion is rare and a fifty/fifty strategy at best.