Glossary
Double Jeopardy
Also known as · Double-Jeopardy-Gesetz
Double Jeopardy is the empirical law that smaller brands suffer twice: they have fewer buyers, and those buyers are slightly less loyal.
Double Jeopardy is an empirical law of buying behaviour: smaller brands are penalised twice. They have fewer buyers, and those buyers are also somewhat less loyal — they buy the brand less often and devote a smaller share of category spend to it.
Why Double Jeopardy matters
It reframes what loyalty means. Differences in loyalty between brands are largely a consequence of size, not of how well a brand is managed. A small brand with below-average repeat rates is usually behaving exactly as its size predicts.
Double Jeopardy in practice
- Judge metrics against size. Compare loyalty to what a brand of that share should show, not to the market leader.
- Set realistic targets. Loyalty cannot be lifted far above the norm for a given penetration.
- Grow first. Loyalty improves as a by-product of gaining buyers.
Double Jeopardy is one of the clearest examples of why brand decisions benefit from norms rather than intuition.
Source · Andrew Ehrenberg, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
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