quantilope, a leading provider of automated research technology, is launching the world's first Mental Availability Norms, enabling brands to accurately benchmark their performance against a pool of category and market competitors. Top 20% of brands hit around 12-14%, depending on category, for Mental Market Share in North America and EMEA with top performers managing to achieve up to 30-50%.
Mental Availability explains how easily a brand comes to mind when consumers are in a buying situation. The new Norms will cover four major regions: North America, Europe, APAC, and LATAM regions and six key industries CPG (non-food), Food & Beverages, Fashion, Durables, Retail and Services.
The Norms will cover three key Mental Availability metrics including Mental Market Share – the percentage of Category Entry Point (CEPs) associations for your brand, compared to all other brands – Mental Penetration, the percentage of category buyers who can link a brand to at least one CEP, indicating growth potential among non-buyers, and Network Size – the average number of CEPs a brand is linked to.
The new Norms allow marketers to benchmark their category position and translate insights into clear action. For example, any brand with a Mental Penetration in the bottom 40% of category brands is struggling to reach non-buyers. Marketers could respond by adapting their media plan to shift budget toward broader-reach campaigns that prioritize reach over frequency which will help build Mental Availability and set the brand up for growth.
"We know from scientific, peer-reviewed research as well as our own experience in applied market research that Mental Availability and actual business outcomes are strongly correlated. These Norms provide critical context for marketers helping them understand 'what good looks like' for their broader category," said Madita Brandhorst, Associate Director of Tracking Solutions at quantilope.
quantilope recommends a layered approach to goal-setting based on Mental Availability metrics: first a correlation analysis should be run to establish the connection of Mental Availability and business outcomes, then quintile-based norms should be layered on top to set realistic goals taking the brand's size into account.
Although specific Norms are exclusive to quantilope clients, key findings from the work include mature markets are more competitive with lower, more evenly distributed Mental Market Share quintiles, first-mover advantage is important in emerging markets where share can reach 3x higher, brand performance can hit a growth ceiling for top 20% tier requiring category expansion focus, and metrics are surprisingly consistent with top 20% consistently achieving mental penetration over 70% regardless of industry.
Since the launch of How Brands Grow by EBI Director Professor Byron Sharp, brands have been increasingly interested in the power of Mental Availability. The company has been offering automated trackers on these metrics since 2023, with a ten-fold growth in new tracker setups between 2023 and 2024, followed by another doubling in subsequent two years.
About quantilope
quantilope is a technology company obsessed with helping customers grow their brand. Our end-to-end, AI-driven Consumer Intelligence Platform transforms the research process, equipping marketers and insights professionals with 15 fully automated advanced methodologies and real-time tracking. By turning complex data into clear, actionable recommendations, we empower over 1000 global brands - including Pepsi, Kenvue, and Nestlé - to make confident decisions at the speed of the market. Recognized as Greenbook's #1 Market Research Technology for two consecutive years, quantilope is the definitive solution for high-impact strategy, innovation, and performance monitoring.
