In brief: Light buyers — occasional purchasers who buy a brand once or a few times a year — make up 70-80% of the customer base of any brand and are the key to growth. Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute on 12,400 UK households shows that the growth potential lies almost entirely with light and non-buyers. Even among leading brands, two thirds of buyers purchase fewer than 5 times in 5 years, generating a third of sales. Growth occurs through increasing penetration (new buyers), not frequency — a law confirmed in 82% of the 880 IPA cases of advertising success.
Your marketing is chasing the wrong people
Let us say it right away, without beating around the bush: most businesses are burning marketing budget to pamper customers who would buy anyway. Meanwhile, the real engine of growth — millions of occasional, distracted, naturally disloyal buyers — is being systematically ignored.
We are talking about Light Buyers. And no, this is not a new concept. It is an empirical law documented by over sixty years of academic research, replicated across thousands of markets worldwide. Yet, in 2026, the vast majority of marketers continue to do the exact opposite of what the data suggests.
At Deep Marketing, we have been saying it for years: opinion-based marketing is dead. What works is evidence-based marketing. And the evidence, in this case, is overwhelming.
Brace yourselves: this article will demolish some of your most deeply held beliefs. But it will do so with numbers, not rhetoric.
Who are Light Buyers: a clear definition
A Light Buyer is a consumer who purchases a given brand with low frequency — typically once or very few times a year. In some categories, we are talking about people who buy your product just once in twelve months, or even less.
They seem irrelevant? Here is the point: Light Buyers make up the vast majority of the customer base of any brand. Not 50%. Not 60%. We are talking about 70-80% and beyond of the customer base.
Their key characteristics:
- They buy rarely — your brand is one of many in their mental repertoire
- They have few memory structures linked to your brand — they know you little and superficially
- They choose by mental availability — they buy the brand that comes to mind most easily at the moment of purchase
- They are not "loyal" in the traditional sense — but neither are Heavy Buyers, as we shall see
- They are numerically dominant — and this is what makes them essential
The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science — the world's most important research center on purchasing behavior — has empirically demonstrated that a brand's growth depends primarily on the acquisition and conversion of Light Buyers, not on the "retention" of Heavy Buyers (Sharp, 2010; Romaniuk & Sharp, 2022).
Why everyone ignores Light Buyers: the Heavy Buyer bias
Here is the perverse mechanism that traps most companies.
When you analyze sales data, Heavy Buyers jump out at you: they buy often, spend a lot, and seem like the "best" customers. The famous Pareto principle — 20% of customers generate 80% of revenue — becomes a mantra. And from there the spiral begins: loyalty programs, hyper-segmented CRM, exclusive offers for "top clients," obsessive retargeting.
The problem? This apparent concentration is largely a statistical artifact.
As Sharp, Anderson, and colleagues (2014) have demonstrated, and before them Ehrenberg, Uncles, and Goodhardt (2004) in the Journal of Business Research, the over-representation of Heavy Buyers in sales data is due to the fact that they are simply more exposed to your messages. They buy more often, so they interact more frequently with your communications. They are not necessarily more "important" for growth — they are just more visible.
It is like a hospital concluding that the most severely ill patients are the most important because they occupy more beds. Technically true. But if you want to improve public health, you need to focus on the general population, not just the ICU.
The Heavy Buyer bias produces three fatal errors:
- Overestimating the value of loyalty — believing that retaining Heavy Buyers generates growth
- Underestimating the number of Light Buyers — ignoring that they represent the critical mass of the market
- Allocating budget toward those who already buy — instead of investing to reach those who do not know you yet or barely know you
The data: growth comes from penetration, not frequency
This is probably the most important law of modern marketing, and the most ignored.
A brand's growth occurs almost exclusively through increasing market penetration — that is, acquiring new buyers, including and especially Light Buyers. Not through increasing the purchase frequency of Heavy Buyers.
This is not an opinion. It is empirical evidence replicated by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute across thousands of product categories, in dozens of countries, from 1960 to the present day.
The numbers speak clearly:
- When a brand grows, penetration (the percentage of people who buy it at least once) increases significantly
- Purchase frequency per customer remains substantially stable or increases only marginally
- When a brand declines, it loses buyers — it does not lose frequency
Put bluntly: Coca-Cola did not become Coca-Cola because its fans drink 10 cans a day. It became Coca-Cola because billions of people drink one every now and then.
The formula for success is almost banal in its simplicity: more people buying from you, even rarely, always beats fewer people buying from you obsessively. The brands that grow are those that continually broaden the base, not those that squeeze those already inside.
Double Jeopardy and Natural Monopoly: the laws nobody explained to you
Let us enter the territory of marketing's empirical laws — the ones that digital gurus ignore because they do not lend themselves to catchy LinkedIn slides.
The Double Jeopardy Law
Originally discovered by McPhee (1963) and formalized by Ehrenberg, Goodhardt, and Barwise (1990), Double Jeopardy states that:
Brands with lower market share suffer a double penalty: they have fewer buyers (lower penetration) AND those buyers are less loyal (lower purchase frequency).
It is not a cosmic injustice. It is a statistical regularity documented on a massive scale. Small brands not only have fewer customers, but those few customers also buy less often compared to customers of large brands.
What does this mean for an SME? That if you are a small brand and you think you can grow by "retaining" your few current customers, you are fighting against a law of nature. Loyalty is largely a function of penetration, not a cause. Penetration comes first, then — as a natural consequence — a bit more loyalty follows.
The Natural Monopoly Law
Closely related to Double Jeopardy, the Natural Monopoly Law establishes that larger brands attract a greater proportion of Light Buyers in the category.
Why? Simple: Light Buyers rarely buy the category. When they do, they choose the brand most readily available in their memory — and that brand, statistically, is the biggest, most present, most visible one.
Large brands therefore have a "natural monopoly" over Light Buyers. These consumers are not loyal to anyone: they buy whoever comes to mind. And whoever comes to mind is whoever invests the most in mental availability and physical availability.
The lesson for anyone who wants to grow: you cannot ignore the Light Buyers in your category. They are the largest growth reserve that exists. But to reach them you must be present — in their heads and on the shelves (physical or digital).
The Duplication of Purchase Law
This is the law that topples the myth of "differentiating positioning" as many understand it.
The Duplication of Purchase Law, documented by Ehrenberg and colleagues and replicated by Hammond et al. (1996), Kennedy et al. (2000), Uncles et al. (2012), and Anesbury et al. (2017), states that:
Every brand shares its customers with competing brands in proportion to each competitor's market share.
In practice: if Brand A has 30% of the market and Brand B has 10%, about 30% of B's customers also buy A, while only 10% of A's customers also buy B.
The implications are devastating for traditional marketing:
- Small brands' customers are almost all also customers of large brands — not the other way around
- There are no "exclusive segments" of consumers loyal to a single brand — loyalty is almost always partial and directed at a repertoire
- Brands do not compete for specific segments — they compete all against all for the attention of the same consumers
- Perceived differentiation is much weaker than marketers believe
This does not mean that differentiation is useless. It means that differentiation does not create "protected niches" as many believe. At most, it creates a slight competitive advantage that works only if accompanied by broad distribution and mass communication.
Regression to the mean: why betting on Heavy Buyers is like building on sand
There is one final nail in the coffin of the "let us focus on Heavy Buyers" strategy: the Law of Buyer Moderation, which is essentially regression to the mean applied to purchasing behavior.
Here is what actually happens:
- The top 20% of your buyers this year will generate about 60% of current sales
- But next year, those same individuals will generate only about 45% — because some of them will return to more normal purchase levels
- At the same time, some of this year's Light Buyers will become more active next year
It is pure statistics: whoever is exceptionally "heavy" in one period tends to return toward the mean in the next period. Not because you did something wrong. Because that is how human behavior works.
This means that investing massively in Heavy Buyer "retention" has diminishing returns. You are trying to hold on to people whose behavior is destined to normalize anyway. Meanwhile, you are ignoring the ocean of Light Buyers that could flow toward your brand.
As Byron Sharp wrote: "Brands do not have a leaking bucket problem. All brands lose customers. The difference is how many they acquire."
How to reach Light Buyers in 2026: practical strategies
Good, we have demolished the illusions. Now let us build. How do you concretely reach Light Buyers in 2026?
1. Invest in Mental Availability
Light Buyers do not think about your brand. Full stop. They do not search for you, do not follow you on social media, do not read your newsletters. You must be the one to enter their minds, building memory associations between your brand and the purchase situations of the category.
How? With broad-reaching communication, not hyper-targeted. Advertising that reaches all potential category buyers, not just your "ideal target." Distinctive brand assets (colors, logos, jingles, shapes) repeated with obsessive consistency.
2. Maximize Physical Availability
A Light Buyer will not make an effort to find you. You need to be where they are, at the moment they decide to buy. This means widespread distribution, shelf presence (physical and digital), ease of purchase, frictionless checkout.
In 2026, physical availability also includes: category SEO (not just brand SEO), presence on marketplaces, Google Shopping, local SEO, and any touchpoint where the consumer searches for the category.
3. Mass communication, not hyper-targeting
This is counterintuitive in the age of performance marketing, but the data is clear: extreme targeting systematically excludes Light Buyers. If you only retarget people who have already visited the site, you are speaking only to those who already know you. If you use lookalikes of your Heavy Buyers, you replicate the bias.
The SOV > SOM rule documented by Danenberg (2016) — where SOV is Share of Voice and SOM is Share of Market — demonstrates that brands that invest proportionally more than competitors in communication grow. But this communication must reach the entire category, not just existing customers.
4. Distinctive creativity, not differentiating
The difference is subtle but crucial. "Differentiating" means communicating why you are different from others. "Distinctive" means being immediately recognizable — even by those who pay you very little attention (i.e., Light Buyers).
Light Buyers do not compare. They do not rationally evaluate. Rational evaluation is the exception, not the norm in purchasing behavior. They choose the brand they recognize, that feels familiar, that comes to mind first. Invest in unique and consistent visual and verbal assets.
5. Tangible innovation and perceived quality
Is there a way for smaller brands to challenge the laws of Double Jeopardy? Yes, but it is narrow. As documented by Sethuraman (2006) and Gielens (2012) in the Journal of Marketing Research, people choose smaller brands when they perceive authentic quality and tangible innovation.
Note: we are talking about real innovation, not cosmetic rebranding. New products that solve concrete problems, objectively superior quality, novel features. This is the only "shortcut" for small brands: being genuinely better at something perceivable.
6. Continuous presence, not intermittent campaigns
Light Buyers buy rarely. This means you do not know when they will buy. If you run campaigns only at Christmas and in June, you will miss all the Light Buyers who purchase in the other ten months. The correct strategy is constant communication pressure, even at low intensity, rather than peaks followed by silence.
Heavy Buyers vs Light Buyers: the table that changes perspective
Strategies for reaching Light Buyers: channel by channel
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Are Light Buyers really more important than Heavy Buyers for growth?
Yes, and it is not an opinion. Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, replicated across thousands of markets from 1960 to the present, demonstrates that growth occurs primarily through increasing penetration — that is, acquiring new buyers and increasing the frequency of lighter buyers. Heavy Buyers are important for current revenue, but their potential for incremental growth is limited. The growth potential of Light and non-buyers is enormously greater, even for brands with high penetration.
Does this mean I should abandon loyalty programs?
Not necessarily abandon them, but drastically lower your expectations. Loyalty programs can be useful as a customer service tool, but they are not growth engines. Loyalty is primarily a consequence of penetration and brand size, not a cause. If you allocate 70% of the marketing budget to retention and 30% to acquisition, you are probably inverting the correct proportions.
How do I reach people who do not know me and are not looking for me?
Exactly this is the point. You must step out of the comfort zone of pure performance marketing and invest in broad-reaching communication: TV, online video with broad targeting, social with broad audiences, Out-of-Home, PR. All with creative that uses consistent distinctive brand assets — colors, logo, characters, sounds — that make your brand immediately recognizable even to someone who gives you a tenth of a second of attention.
Does Double Jeopardy mean small brands are doomed?
No, but it means they must be realistic about strategy. A small brand cannot compete on loyalty — it will always lose to large brands, by statistical law. It can compete on incremental penetration within its niche, on tangible innovation (Gielens, 2012), and on perceived quality (Sethuraman, 2006). The key is to invest proportionally more in communication (SOV > SOM) to grow gradually, not to chase shortcuts in "retention."
Do these laws also apply to B2B and services?
Yes. Research from the LinkedIn B2B Institute, in collaboration with Ehrenberg-Bass, has confirmed that the same empirical laws — Double Jeopardy, penetration as the driver of growth, the importance of Light Buyers — also apply to B2B markets. Business buyers show the same patterns of repertoire, low loyalty, and choice based on mental availability. It is not surprising: ultimately, even in B2B, the decision-makers are human beings with the same cognitive limitations.
Is performance marketing useless then?
No, but it is insufficient on its own. Performance marketing is excellent at converting existing demand — people who are already searching for your category. But it does not create new demand and does not reach Light Buyers who are not searching for you. The optimal strategy in 2026 combines brand building (to create mental availability among Light Buyers) and performance (to capture demand when it manifests). The ideal ratio? Binet and Field suggest a 60/40 split in favor of brand building, though it varies by category.
How do I measure whether I am reaching Light Buyers?
Traditional digital metrics (ROAS, CPA, conversion rate) are blind to Light Buyers by definition — they measure those who have already interacted. The right metrics are: unique reach across the category (not your audience), brand awareness and mental availability (measured through surveys on category entry points), market penetration (percentage of target population that has purchased at least once), and brand lift from communication campaigns.
Sources and References
- Trinh, Dawes & Sharp — Where is the Brand Growth Potential? An Examination of Buyer Groups, Marketing Letters (2023)
- Bain & Company — The Biggest Contributor to Brand Growth (2024)
- Ehrenberg-Bass Institute — How Do You Measure 'How Brands Grow'?
- WARC — Penetration vs Loyalty: What's the Best Way for a Brand to Grow?
- Corsi, Rungie & Casini — Double Jeopardy — 50 Years On, Australasian Marketing Journal (2017)
- Sharp, B. — How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know, Oxford University Press (2010)
- Romaniuk & Sharp — How Brands Grow Part 2 Revised Edition, Oxford University Press (2022)
