Evidence hub

What marketing research actually shows

Plain-English syntheses of the peer-reviewed evidence on brand growth, loyalty, advertising, pricing and research methods, each finding linked to the studies behind it.

Popular claims, checked

• Do brands grow through penetration or loyalty? Supported, with limits
• Do loyalty programs change buying behaviour? Contradicted by the evidence
• Does Net Promoter Score predict company growth? Contradicted by the evidence
• Does the duplication of purchase law hold? Well established
• Is choice overload real? Does too much choice stop people buying? Mixed evidence

Advertising

• Advertising attention: what research shows about being seen
  Why served ads are often not seen, why people avoid online ads, how attention shifts during viewing, and how solid the evidence on attention metrics really is.
• Advertising incrementality: how to know whether ads worked
  What large field experiments show about measuring advertising incrementality, why observational methods overstate lift, and why even big tests are often underpowered.
• Creative effectiveness: what in the ad itself drives results
  What research shows about advertising creative: execution and sales, emotion, humour, branding, distinctive assets and packaging, and where the evidence is industry-only.
• How advertising works: mechanisms, elasticities and returns
  How advertising affects memory and sales, how large its sales effect really is, how it compares with other marketing levers, and how to report its returns.
• Share of voice and media planning: reach, frequency and budgets
  What research shows about share of voice, excess share of voice, reach and frequency, carryover, going dark and advertising in recessions, and which rules are shaky.

B2B marketing

• B2B brand growth and the 95:5 rule: what the research shows
  Do consumer brand-growth patterns hold in business markets? What studies show on double jeopardy, the 95:5 rule and B2B mental availability, and where evidence is thin.
• B2B buying behavior: buying situations, risk and the buying group
  How organizations buy: what research shows on buying situations, the buying group, perceived risk, trust and the role of brands in B2B purchasing decisions.
• B2B market structure: competition, market share and concentration
  How business markets are structured: evidence on Dirichlet patterns in B2B buying, how brands share customers, what market share is worth and customer concentration.
• B2B sales management: sales force design, territories and channels
  What research shows on B2B sales management: sales force sizing, territory design, social selling, digital content and omnichannel selling, and how strong it is.
• Value-based selling in B2B: trust, value and what research shows
  What research shows on value-based selling in B2B: measuring customer value, value propositions, commitment and trust, co-creation, and capturing value in price.

Brand growth

• Brand equity: what the research shows
  What brand equity is, how it is measured in surveys and in sales data, what peer-reviewed studies link it to, and where the evidence is weaker than often assumed.
• NBD-Dirichlet model: what the research shows
  What the NBD-Dirichlet model of repeat buying is, what it predicts from a few inputs, how well it fits real markets, and where it breaks down.
• Double jeopardy: what the research shows
  Why smaller brands have fewer buyers who are also slightly less loyal: the evidence for double jeopardy, where it holds, and where it is still debated.
• How brands grow: what the research shows
  Do brands grow by winning more buyers or by making existing buyers more loyal? What studies of penetration and loyalty show, and where the evidence is thin.
• Laws of buyer behaviour: what repeat-buying research shows
  An overview of the regularities in how people buy brands: repeat buying, double jeopardy, repertoires, duplication of purchase and the role of light buyers.
• Light vs heavy buyers: what the research shows
  Do heavy buyers carry a brand's sales? What studies of the Pareto share, ultra-light buyers and buyer stability show, and why light buyers matter for growth.
• Mental and physical availability: what the research shows
  What mental availability, category entry points and physical availability are, what peer-reviewed studies show about them, and where the evidence is thin.
• New product diffusion and category growth: the evidence
  How new products spread and categories grow: the Bass diffusion model, what predicts new product success, and which buyer behaviours drive category revenue.

Consumer psychology

• Choice architecture and decision biases: what the research shows
  Loss aversion, anchoring, defaults, decoys, choice overload and nudges: what peer-reviewed studies show about decision biases and how large the effects are.
• Consumer culture theory: identity, meaning and brands
  What consumer culture theory shows about identity, brand meaning, resistance and inequality, and why its evidence is rich in mechanism but light on effect sizes.
• Social influence and persuasion: evidence for marketers
  Social proof, norms, authority, scarcity and word of mouth: which persuasion effects hold in field studies, which rest on single lab experiments, and where they backfire.

Customers & loyalty

• Customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics: NPS, CRM and the evidence
  How satisfaction, NPS, switching costs, churn and lifetime value relate to loyalty and firm performance, and why the links are weaker than dashboards imply.

Digital & platforms

• Algorithmic curation: how recommenders and playlists steer demand
  What research shows about algorithmic curation: how recommendations and playlist placement change what people consume, how varied it is and which producers get heard.
• Filter bubbles and recommender diversity: what the evidence shows
  Do recommender systems trap people in filter bubbles? What studies show on recommender diversity and popularity bias, and why results depend on how diversity is measured.
• Long tail vs. superstar effect: does digital demand spread out?
  Does online retail shift sales toward niche products (the long tail) or concentrate them on hits (the superstar effect)? What studies show and what decides the outcome.
• Marketing analytics and AI: what peer-reviewed research shows
  Frameworks for analytics and AI in marketing, plus evidence on machine learning for research, reactions to algorithms, algorithmic pricing and platform power.
• Social media, influencers and online word of mouth: the research
  What studies show about online reviews, virality, brand posts, paid social measurement, influencers and B2B social selling, and where the evidence is still thin.

Pricing

• Price promotions: what they do to sales, buyers and profit
  What peer-reviewed research shows about price promotions: short sales spikes, no lasting gain, mostly existing buyers, reference-price effects and profit.
• Pricing and customer value: what research shows on price and discounts
  What research shows on pricing: price elasticity, reference prices, what discounts really do, measuring customer value, value-based pricing and switching costs.

Research methods

• Citation analysis: what citation counts do and don't tell you
  What drives citations of research articles, whether citation counts measure quality, and what scientometric studies show about their limits for judging research.
• Empirical generalizations in marketing: what the research shows
  What an empirical generalization is, how marketing researchers build lawlike patterns through replication, which examples have held up, and where it falls short.
• Marketing knowledge: how it is made and when to trust it
  How marketing findings become knowledge through replication and meta-analysis, and the newer threats of causal overstatement, citation bias and AI-generated data.
• Research methods pitfalls: ratio variables and censored data
  Two statistical traps in marketing research, spurious correlation from ratio variables and bias from censored churn or purchase data, and the methods that avoid them.
• Synthetic respondents: can LLMs stand in for survey participants?
  What research shows about synthetic respondents and silicon sampling with large language models, and the growing risk of AI-generated answers in online survey panels.

Strategy

• Competitive strategy: the foundations behind marketing advantage
  Where lasting competitive advantage comes from: resources, strategic fit, the experience curve, business models and market-based assets, and how well each is supported.
• Marketing and firm value: what the research shows
  Does marketing create shareholder value? Meta-analytic evidence on market orientation, marketing assets, advertising and marketing capabilities, and its limits.
• Segmentation, targeting and positioning: what the evidence says
  Does STP describe how brands compete? What studies show about buyer segments, narrow targeting and positioning, and where the two research camps disagree.