Evidence · Brand growth

Double jeopardy: what the research shows

Smaller brands suffer twice: they have far fewer buyers, and those buyers also buy them somewhat less often. The pattern has been replicated for decades across packaged goods, services, wine, sport and non-Western markets, and it follows statistically from brand size, so behavioural loyalty is largely a consequence of penetration. Its strength varies by category, and it is less settled for attitudes than for buying behaviour.

Definition

Double jeopardy is the regularity that, within a category, brands with lower market share have both fewer buyers and buyers who are slightly less loyal, for example buying the brand a little less often or giving it a smaller share of their category purchases. The key feature is the asymmetry: the number of buyers varies greatly from brand to brand, while loyalty varies only a little.

What the research finds

Buyer numbers vary a lot, loyalty only a little

Across brands in a category, penetration differs enormously while loyalty and switching measures stay broadly similar or decline only slightly for smaller brands. The pattern was first noticed by a sociologist for comic strips and radio presenters, and later found across branded goods and many other competitive markets. Its explanation is statistical and needs no special marketing variables.^[1]^[2]

It follows from the Dirichlet model

Double jeopardy is a prediction of the NBD-Dirichlet model of repeat buying, which assumes a stable market without special brand groupings. A meta-analysis of 37 categories and 40 quarters of data found that a simple straight line relating penetration to purchase frequency works only in limited conditions, and that a Dirichlet-based line portrays the pattern better across a broad range of markets.^[3]^[4]

Replicated across markets and decades

In 32 differentiated replications, some over 35 years apart and including industrial buying, emerging markets and long periods of continuous buying, no boundary condition to double jeopardy was found. It also held over five years in two packaged-goods categories in two Chinese cities, and in a panel of 25,000 wine buyers in Europe.^[5]^[6]^[7]

It holds for spending, not only purchase counts

One might expect price differences to hide the pattern when loyalty is measured in money. In thirteen consumer goods categories, smaller brands still had fewer buyers who spent somewhat less on them, and brand share was unrelated to average price.^[8]

Its strength varies by category

Cigarettes show only a weak double jeopardy pattern alongside unusually high loyalty. Among 794 Australian sport fans, supporters of high-share teams reported higher attitudinal loyalty than fans of small-share teams, extending the pattern to a setting sometimes thought to be immune to it.^[9]^[10]

Attitudes partly follow behaviour

Researchers have compared double jeopardy at the behavioural and attitudinal levels. Consumers who buy a brand more often, and give it a larger share of their category buying, are more likely to link it with brand associations. Across 188 brands in 11 sectors, penetration strongly predicted brands' share of wallet but explained almost nothing at the individual level, where satisfaction relative to competitors mattered more.^[11]^[12]^[13]

Bigger brands may also attract more criticism

A longitudinal study of anti-brand websites, blogs and social networking pages suggests a mirror pattern, sometimes called negative double jeopardy, in which bigger brands draw more consumer-organised anti-brand activity. This rests on a small number of studies.^[14]

How strong is the evidence?

Behavioural double jeopardy is among the most replicated patterns in marketing, across categories, countries and decades. Much of the replication work comes from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and related researchers, although independent groups have reported it in sport, wine, services and China. The pattern describes stable repertoire markets; subscription markets, where buyers hold one brand at a time, behave differently, and partitioned categories show exceptions. Whether attitudes follow the same structure is less settled, and the negative version of the pattern is based on limited evidence.

Claims tested against the evidence

Do brands grow through penetration or loyalty? Supported, with limits
Do loyalty programs change buying behaviour? Contradicted by the evidence

References

Andrew S. C. Ehrenberg, Gerald J. Goodhardt, T. Patrick Barwise (1990). Double Jeopardy Revisited. Journal of Marketing.
Andrew S. C. Ehrenberg, Mark D. Uncles, Gerald J. Goodhardt (2004). Understanding Brand Performance Measures: Using Dirichlet Benchmarks. Journal of Business Research.
Gerald J. Goodhardt, Andrew S. C. Ehrenberg, Christopher Chatfield (1984). The Dirichlet: A Comprehensive Model of Buying Behaviour. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General).
Cullen Habel, Larry Lockshin (2013). Realizing the value of extensive replication: A theoretically robust portrayal of double jeopardy. Journal of Business Research.
Charles Graham, Dag Bennett, Katrin Franke, Cathy Lu Henfrey, May Nagy-Hamada (2017). Double Jeopardy – 50 Years On. Reviving a Forgotten Tool that Still Predicts Brand Loyalty. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ).
Mark D. Uncles, Chao Wang, Simon Kwok (2010). A Temporal Analysis of Behavioural Brand Loyalty among Urban Chinese Consumers. Journal of Marketing Management.
Damien Wilson, Maxwell Winchester (2019). Extending the double jeopardy and duplication of purchase laws to the wine market. International Journal of Wine Business Research.
John Dawes, Allison E. Bond, Nicole Hartnett, Byron Sharp (2017). Does Double Jeopardy Apply Using Average Spend per Buyer as the Loyalty Metric?. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ).
John Dawes (2014). Cigarette brand loyalty and purchase patterns: An examination using US consumer panel data. Journal of Business Research.
Jason P. Doyle, Kevin Filo, Heath McDonald, Daniel C. Funk (2012). Exploring sport brand double jeopardy: The link between team market share and attitudinal loyalty. Sport Management Review.
Subir Bandyopadhyay, Kaushik Gupta (2004). Comparing Double Jeopardy Effects at the Behavioral and Attitudinal Levels. Journal of Product & Brand Management.
Jenni Romaniuk, Magda Nenycz-Thiel (2013). Behavioral brand loyalty and consumer brand associations. Journal of Business Research.
Alexander Buoye, Yuliya Komarova Loureiro, Sertan Kabadayi, Mohammad G. Nejad, Timothy L. Keiningham, Lerzan Aksoy, Jason Allsopp (2016). Is share of wallet exclusively about making customers happy or having more customers? Exploring the relationship between satisfaction and double jeopardy. Journal of service management.
S. Umit Kucuk (2010). Negative Double Jeopardy revisited: A longitudinal analysis. Journal of Brand Management.

Bibliographic details only. Follow the DOI to read each study at its publisher.

Building on this evidence?

ScholarSignal checks a new research idea against the closest existing work and an editor rubric, and tells you whether the contribution is new enough for the journals you target.

Evaluate my idea for free