The 1995 publication of All Consumers Are Not Created Equal revolutionized Consumer Packaged Goods marketing. For the first time, CPG case studies proved that some consumers are vastly more profitable than others.
Today, the 80/20 rule commonly guides brand marketing. However, new Shopper Card research reveals the surprising degree to which increasingly smaller percentages of consumers now drive 80% of a brand’s volume.
As proof, one need only read the year-long Pivotal Point Consumer™ Study.
This Shopper Card tracking study is unprecedented in its breadth: It followed 54 million consumers’ purchases across 23,000 grocery stores, mass merchandisers and chain drug stores and covered 1,364 CPG brands representing the most popular products in 328 categories.
The findings? Only 2.5% of shoppers make up 80% of the average CPG brand’s volume.
The results surprised even the study’s authors – who next collaborated with the FMI Sustainability Task Force to follow the purchasing behavior of over 100 million unique shopper IDs across 2,000 Green products. What they discovered will shock you.
For many products with Green and organic claims, the concentration is dramatically narrower: Just four thousand out of every million consumers drive the vast majority of your volume.
To a marketer faced with increasingly nuanced preferences, this either a problem or an opportunity: The more concentrated your high-value consumers, the more important you get to know them.
But as a CPG brand, I sell through retailers and can’t track my consumers’ purchases. How can I:
- Identify the high-value consumers who account for 80% of my volume?
- Reward them for their purchases, insights and brand evangelism?
- Focus new buyer acquisition efforts on consumers who profile similarly?
We can help. The EcoBonus™ loyalty program separates the golden eggs from goose eggs.
Ecobonus.org is a new coalition loyalty program that promotes environmentally preferable products and rewards consumers for eco-conscious choices. Launching Fall, 2010, the program enables participating brands to identify their most valuable consumers and interact with them directly.
The program combines proven loyalty marketing principles and cutting-edge technology, and builds old-fashioned brand loyalty and old-fashioned profits. As Garth Hallberg pointed out 15 years ago:
“All consumers are NOT created equal. Some are vastly more profitable than others, and the marketers who succeed in an increasingly brand-hostile and technology-driven environment will be those who know how to capitalize on the difference.” Learn how.