Is a niche brand in the market also a niche in consumers' mind?

In this exploratory study we investigate whether a brand identified as ‘niche’ in traditional brand performance metrics (penetration and average purchase frequency) is also ‘niche’ in metrics representative of brand attribute associations. We assess the level of brand salience (propensity of eliciting brand attribute associations), the average association rate and salience penetration (proportion of people eliciting at least one association for a specific brand). We found that differential levels of loyalty, as reflected in deviations from the Double Jeopardy, are not apparent in salience metrics. This may be either because movements in brand attribute associations precede those in loyalty or because these two sets of performance metrics capture different constructs. Further research is underway to clarify these competing views