Representing excess loyalty on the double jeopardy line

Abstract

Brands in a competitive market differ more in the number of customers they have than in the amount of loyalty that is shown by those customers. The “Double Jeopardy Line” is an x-y plot for brands of different market share in the market. This paper uses a benchmark theoretical double jeopardy line to demonstrate when brands are showing greater average purchase frequency than would be expected for their size. By combining a number of existing brands the behaviour of two “superbrands” can be assessed against the Dirichlet benchmark thus representing the systematic deviation for high share brands. The findings are consistent with Fader and Schmittlein’s (1993) finding of “triple jeopardy” – large brands enjoy higher than expected levels of average purchase frequency per shopper. As well as validating a documented limitation of a popular FMCG model it gives insight to marketers as to expected behaviour of its customers given their brand’s size.