At any period of time, the consumer base of a brand is comprised of two sets of buyers:  New Triers, and Repeat Purchasers.

The terms are self-explanatory. To put it simply, Repeat Purchasers are consumers (or households) who repeated the purchase of the brand, and New Triers are consumers (or households) who bought the brand now, but who didn’t buy earlier.

A little more detail

For example, lets take two annual periods 2007 and 2008. Repeat Purchasers of a brand X are those who bought the brand atleast once in 2007 and also who bought the brand atleast once in 2008. New Triers are those who didn’t buy the brand in 2007, but bought the brand atleast once in 2008. Lapsers are those who bought the brand atleast once in 2007, but didn’t buy the brand in 2008. So, it is evident that whenever we refer to the terms New Triers, Repeaters, and Lapsers, we should always have two periods for reference. These periods can be an year, a quarter, a month,  or a week. Similarly, the terms New Triers, Repeaters, and Lapsers can refer to the number of consumers or households depending on the industry. In Telecom or IT, typically it might refer to the number of consumers or users of your device or app, whereas in FMCG it might indicate the number of households that bought the brand. So, whether it refers to consumers or companies or households depends on the industry data, but the philosophy remains the same.

Various Segments of the New Triers of a Brand

So, continuing with the previous example, New Triers are those who didn’t buy the brand in 2007, but bought the brand atleast once in 2008. The important thing to notice is the criteria ‘atleast once‘, which means some number of new triers might have bought the brand multiple times in 2008 (say once in February, June and October of 2008). Don’t get confused with Repeater because the Repeater has bought the brand atleast once in both 2007 and 2008.

So,  a New Trier of a Brand X in 2008 comprises of all consumers (or households) that have:

– Not bought the brand in 2007, and bought the brand in Jan’2008 and never bought the brand again in 2008.
– Not bought the brand in 2007, and bought the brand in Jan’2008 and repeated the purchase in Jun’2008
– Not bought the brand in 2007, and bought the brand in Feb’08 and Aug’08 and Dec’08.
– Not bought the brand in 2007, and bought the brand only in Dec’08
– Not bought the brand in 2007, and bought in ………………

So, regarding New Triers of a brand,  the marketer is interested in finding out:

– How many New Triers have bought the brand in the year 2008?

– Out of the New Triers of 2008, how many consumers (or households) went on to repeat purchase my brand in the next 12 months? For example, if a New Trier purchased the brand in May 2008, then did he repeat purchase my brand in the next 12 months or in 2008. You can define the period as you wish. This shows us the effectiveness in understanding if the problem is in converting the new trials to repeat purchases or is the problem of the brand not getting enough trials? (Please note that these repeaters are different from the brand repeaters in 2008).

– How many First Time Ever Buyers?  If you observe carefully, the new triers in our example are consumers (or households) who didn’t buy in 2007, and bought atleast once in 2008. So, the consumer (or household) could’ve bought in 2006, but didn’t buy in 2007 and then bought in 2008. So, these type of consumers are also New Triers in 2008, but they are not buying the brand for the first time.

So, First Time Ever Buyers of Brand X in 2008 are those who didn’t buy the brand anytime before, but bought the brand X in 2008.

– Among the New Triers (consumers or households) that my brand got in 2008, how many of them are category entrants (consumers or households that were not using the category before, but entered the category with my brand), and how many of them are brand entrants (consumers or households that were using some other brand in the category, but not using your brand). This is especially important for SKUs that are launched to drive the category and brand recruitment.

– How many of the New Triers of my brand in 2008, were using some specific brand ABC before. For example, if a user was using a brand Cinthol in 2007, but now she bought the brand Dove of the same category in 2008.  So, this will help the marketer understand which are the brands that I am pulling consumers from?

– What is the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) or the Average Volume Consumption of the New Trier? Am I recruiting the high category volume consumers? Do my New Triers increase the volume consumption along the line?

– Is my New Trier also buying some other brand? Is he buying both Cinthol and Dove ?

Similarly, there are a lot of things that can be done on the New Triers, Repeaters and Lapsers. So, one can slice and dice the data in anyway we want to look at and analyze for key insights. I will write down more details in another post.

Thank you.