1.5

Mental & Physical Availability

A two-factor account of brand growth: the probability of being noticed or recalled in a buying situation, and the ease of buying once you are.

Byron Sharp (2010), on Ehrenberg's 1960s–70s buyer-behaviour evidence

What it does

Reduces growth to two factors: coming to mind in the buying situation, and being easy to buy once you do. Both are measurable, which is the point — it converts brand talk into two trackable targets.

When it breaks

Where distribution is fixed and single-channel, the second term carries no information and everything collapses into the first.

Case

The doctrine predates the term: Robert Woodruff's standing instruction at Coca-Cola was to put the product “within an arm's reach of desire,” which drove the distribution build-out that made the brand physically unavoidable long before anyone measured mental availability.

The Coca-Cola Company — company history ↗

Diagram — not yet drawn

Two overlapping circles, memory and distribution, with purchases only occurring in the intersection; the two crescents labelled with what is lost.

In the wild

Unvetted · not part of the tier assessment

What has been written about this tool in the last twelve months. Machine-retrieved and unchecked — everything above this line was checked.

    Loading…