Dale W. Harrison wrote that the popular belief that brands grow simply by boosting advertising and building “mental availability” is misleading.
Despite decades of research across thousands of categories, the evidence shows that market share is highly stable over years and decades: large brands stay large, and small brands rarely grow.
Revenue growth does not equal market share growth.
Many brands grow revenue only because their category itself expands, not because they successfully capture share from competitors. That is more luck than strategy.
True market share gains are extremely rare.
A major Ehrenberg-Bass Institute study of 639 brands in 28 categories found:
– Only 4% achieved even 1% annual share growth over five years.
– One-third saw no growth at all.
– Another third lost share.
The average total market share gain across all brands was just +0.01% over five years.
The conclusion: most markets are stationary, and marketing activity typically has limited long-term impact on relative share.
