New Brands: Near-Instant Loyalty

It is widely thought that loyalty to successful new brands or line-extensions evolves slowly. An unexpected but striking finding therefore is that loyalty to the new brand was near-instant in some 20 cases examined so far: the new brands' average purchase frequency at launch is already normal, i.e. at the same level as a year or two later and also as for competitive established brands. The finding was unexpected but now makes much sense with hindsight. More empirical work is in hand.