Abstract
THE correlation between whether or not people buy one brand of a non-durable consumer good and whether or not they buy another brand in the same product-field is extremely low, usually between +0.2 and −0.1. These small correlations are, however, highly systematic and reflect a relationship of the form 
where bX and bY are the proportions of the population buying brands X and Y respectively in the given time-period, bXY is the proportion buying both brands, and D is a constant. For observed duplication values ranging up to about bXY = 20 per cent, this relationship holds to within an average of ±1.5 percentage points.
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EHRENBERG, A., GOODHARDT, G. Incidence of Brand-Switching. Nature 220, 304 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1038/220304a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/220304a0
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