When people are willing to try new products

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People are creatures of habit, buying the same brands week after week. While loyalty works in a company’s favour for a chosen brand, for new products – those trying to build market share or break into a new category – it’s a force against them.

But scientists at University College London (UCL) and customer science company dunnhumby have created a new model that can predict when people are most likely to try different brands or products. 

The researchers – led by Professor Brad Love of the UCL’s Department of Experimental Psychology and The Alan Turing Institute – drew on the Tesco Clubcard database to look at people’s purchasing habits.

They looked at six categories: beer, bread, coffee, toilet paper, washing detergents and yogurt, and examined the choices of more than 280, 000 anonymised individuals in supermarkets over several years. 

People with at least 50 purchases within a specific product ...