Retrial is every purchase a household makes of a brand after its first one. Many teams call it repeat purchase, and it is usually discussed together with trial as trial and retrial. Retrial drives buying rate, which is how much each buying household purchases over a period.
A brand's volume equals household penetration times buying rate. Trial adds households to penetration. Retrial is what happens after that, and it shows up as a higher buying rate when the households that already bought keep coming back and buying more often.
Retrial depends on a lot of things the brand does after the first sale. The product has to deliver on what the shopper expected. It has to be on the shelf when they come back, which is why out-of-stocks hurt retrial more than people expect. And the brand has to stay in the shopper's mind long enough for the next trip to the store to include it.
Panel data from Circana or Nielsen estimates retrial by following a sample of households over time and seeing how many bought again. POS data cannot show retrial at all, because it records the sale without knowing who made it.
A brand with healthy penetration and weak buying rate has a retrial problem. Lots of households have tried it, but too many of them buy once and never again. These one-and-dones are expensive, because the brand paid to win each of them through sampling, coupons, or a promotion and got a single purchase in return.
Fixing a retrial problem calls for different tools than fixing a trial problem. The work moves away from reaching new households and toward the experience of existing buyers, which includes product quality, shelf availability, communication between purchases, and reasons to come back.
Retailers watch retrial closely as well. Strong retrial tells a category manager that the item has loyal buyers who will come back to the store for it, and that matters when shelf space is being decided at line review.
A beverage brand sees its household penetration climb after a year of heavy sampling, but its volume barely moves. When the team looks at buying rate, they find that most households bought once and did not return. The brand has a retrial problem, so it shifts some of its effort toward keeping first-time buyers engaged after that first purchase and checks distribution gaps that might be sending returning shoppers to a competitor.
Treating every growth problem as a trial problem. Many brands default to more sampling and more promotion because those tools are familiar and easy to report on. If the real issue is that buyers are not coming back, adding more first-time buyers just adds more one-and-dones and raises the cost of every unit sold.
Where TrueLoyal fits: Receipt scanning credits a member's purchase from any store to their loyalty account and captures where they bought and what, so a brand can see retrial among its opted-in members over time. Brands can also set up workflows, such as sending an email when a member makes a purchase, to stay in touch between trips.
Yes, the two describe the same behavior. Pairing retrial with trial keeps both halves of a brand's growth side by side, which makes it easier to see which one is the real problem.
Retrial describes the behavior, which is a household buying again after the first purchase. Buying rate is the measure of how much each buying household purchases, and strong retrial is what pushes it up.
Common causes include a product that does not meet expectations, poor shelf availability when shoppers return, a promotion that attracted deal seekers, and a lack of reasons to remember the brand between trips.
Yes. A brand can measure it for the shoppers it has a direct relationship with, because it can see whether those people buy again, although that group will lean toward its more engaged buyers and will not represent the whole market.
Trial is a household's first purchase of a brand or product. It is the moment a shopper moves from never having bought to having bought once, and it is what grows household penetration. In TrueLoyal's vocabulary trial is the first buy and retrial is every buy after it.
Buying rate is how much each buying household purchases of a brand or category over a set period, usually a year. It is measured in units, dollars, or purchase occasions per buying household. Together with household penetration it explains where a brand's volume comes from, because penetration times buying rate equals volume.
Household penetration is the percentage of households in a market that bought a brand at least once in a given period. It answers how many people are buying rather than how much they are buying.
Purchase velocity is how fast a product sells, measured as units sold per store per week. It is the same measure that retailers and brands simply call velocity, and it shows how well a product sells in the stores that already carry it. Because it divides out the number of stores, it lets a brand compare performance fairly across retailers, regions, and time periods.
Out-of-stock, usually shortened to OOS, is a product not being on the shelf when a shopper looks for it. It is measured from the shelf rather than from the warehouse, which is the distinction that matters. A product can be in the store, in the back room, and still out of stock as far as the shopper is concerned. The same measure stated positively is on-shelf availability.
A brand fan club is a membership program built for a brand's most enthusiastic customers, where the focus is on participation and belonging. Members join to get closer to the brand, connect with other fans, and take part in activities such as sharing content, answering surveys, and joining discussions. It often runs alongside a traditional loyalty program that rewards purchases.
The platform for consumer brands serious about earning loyalty. Rewards to shape behavior. Fan Club™ to nurture your brand's super fans.
