What Is Brand Switching in Retail?

Brand switching is what happens when a shopper enters a store or opens an online shopping session intending to buy one brand and leaves with a different one. It is the single most measurable form of brand defection in retail, and for CPG brand managers it is the gap between the loyalty they have paid to build and the sale they actually capture.

A brand switch can happen in seconds. The shopper is standing in the aisle, comparing two packages, and something shifts their hand. A price tag. A promotion. A neighbor’s recommendation overhead. A new flavor. A frustration with their usual pick. The switch is not random; it is driven by a specific trigger at a specific moment, and that is what makes it measurable.

In our experience, most CPG companies underestimate how much brand switching is happening in their category. They base their estimates on post-purchase surveys and recall data, which systematically underreport switching because shoppers do not remember or will not admit they abandoned their intended brand. In-the-moment research tells a different story.

Why Customers Switch Brands: The Real Drivers

Research on why customers switch brands converges on a consistent set of drivers. A January 2025 Capgemini report found that 70 percent of consumers worldwide have switched brands because they enjoy experimenting with new options, not just because they are dissatisfied. EY’s research on the CPG-retail dynamic found that brands are not important in 48 percent of purchase decisions, which means nearly half of shoppers are open to switching before they even reach the shelf.

 The drivers fall into three groups:

1. Value pressure. Inflation and stagnant wages have made shoppers price sensitive in categories where they used to be loyal. McKinsey’s 2026 State of the Consumer notes that when purchasing essentials, consumers optimize within the category by switching brands, adjusting pack sizes, or seeking promotions.
2. In-aisle triggers. Promotions, shelf placement, private label alternatives, and packaging changes can flip a decision at the moment of purchase. These triggers are invisible to post-purchase research because the shopper has already rationalized their choice by the time they are surveyed.
3. Relevance drift. The customer’s needs evolve and the brand does not evolve with them. A snack brand that was perfect for a household with young kids feels wrong when those kids become teenagers with different tastes. The brand did not get worse; it stopped fitting.

The common thread: switching brands is not irrational behavior from the shopper’s perspective. They stayed with a brand because it met their needs, and they left because something else met those needs better at that moment. Understanding which driver is dominant in your category is the first step toward doing something about it.

Brand Loyalty vs Switching: What the Data Shows

The brand loyalty vs switching debate is often framed as a tug of war, but the data says loyalty and switching coexist in the same shopper. The same consumer who is fiercely loyal to one toothpaste brand will switch cereal brands every shopping trip. Loyalty is category-specific, not person-specific, and it is far more fragile than brand teams want to believe.

According to NBC26 reporting on recent retail data, 60 percent of shoppers ditched a loyal brand in the past year. Capgemini’s 2025 findings put the experimentation-driven switching rate at 70 percent globally. These are not edge cases. They are the majority behavior.

What this means for brand managers: the question is not whether your customers are switching. They are. The question is whether you can measure where, when, and why the switch happens with enough precision to intervene, and that is where brand tracking comes in. That is the gap between knowing you have a problem and knowing what to do about it.

The brands that hold loyalty are not the ones with the best advertising. They are the ones that have identified the specific moments where switching pressure is highest and have built responses for those moments, whether that is shelf-level promotion, packaging redesign, or associate engagement at the point of decision.

How In-Store Promotions Trigger a Brand Switch

In-store promotions are the most visible brand switch trigger, but their effect is more complex than ‘discount wins.’ A 2021 study published in the Journal of Economics and Innovation found that in-store promotions significantly influence both brand loyalty and brand switching behavior, with effects varying by category and shopper segment. Research published in the Journal of Business Research (2023) showed that recommendation systems in online stores can trigger switching between private labels and national brands, and the same dynamic plays out physically when shelf talkers and end-cap displays push a competitor product.

What our intercept research consistently shows is that promotions do not cause a brand switch on their own. They cause a switch when the shopper is already wavering. The promotion is the final nudge, not the root cause. The root cause is usually a combination of price sensitivity, curiosity about the alternative, and a moment of undivided attention in the aisle.

This is why post-purchase surveys get it wrong. When you ask a shopper why they switched, they say ‘it was on sale.’ When you intercept them in the aisle at the moment of decision, you learn that they had been noticing the competitor’s packaging for three trips, that their usual brand raised its price two months ago, and that the promotion was just the thing that made them act. The promotion is the trigger. The causes were building for weeks.

For brand teams, this means measuring promotion-driven switching requires in-the-moment research, not recall. The data you collect at the shelf is fundamentally different from the data you collect after the shopper has left the store.

The Gold Research Approach: In-the-Moment Intercept Data

Our approach to measuring brand switching is built on a simple principle: you have to catch the decision while it is happening. Retrospective surveys reconstruct the shopper’s reasoning after the fact, and people are bad at reconstructing why they made a choice. They tell you what they think you want to hear, or what they told themselves, or what they can remember. None of that is the actual decision.

Our proprietary Gold Intercepts methodology captures brand purchase intent and actual brand purchase in the moment the decision is made, not after. We combine shop-along observation, eye-tracking, and mobile ethnographic research to isolate the exact location and levers of the brand switch and identify who the brand winners and losers are in the aisle.

Two perspectives are essential to getting this right:

• Customer Journey perspective. Understanding the full customer journey and the degree to which brand preferences are created, reinforced, or abandoned along the way tells marketers where to focus messaging and promotional investments for maximum impact.
• In-the-Moment vs Post-Purchase research. Capturing brand purchase intent and actual brand purchase at the moment the decision is made, not hours or days later in a survey.

In-the-moment research approaches are not new. They are more expensive than post-purchase surveys and a lot more valuable. The cost of not doing them is the cost of making decisions based on wrong data, which is exactly what happened to the client in the case study below.

Case Study: When the Real Number Was 70 Percent

Every CPG brand manager worries about brand switching.  They make their investments to build awareness, trial, purchase intent – only to lose the sale because the shopper switched along the way.  Thousands of case studies and research efforts have been launched to help them determine:

• how much brand switching occurs
• when it occurs along the journey
• the key influencers at the moment the decision is made.

One of our CPG retail clients felt like there was a good deal of brand switching in their category – estimated to be 20% or so – based on past research.  Their product managers felt it was higher – but didn’t have any data.  Our research found that the actual amount of brand switching was 70% in one channel and over 50% in another channel.  And the switching was primarily happening in the aisle and brand decisions were not being materially impacted by store associates, advertising or prices. 

These insights allow them to refocus their packaging design, in-aisle promotion and word-of-mouth activities to drive immediate sales increases and category leadership.   What was more concerning is that their past research efforts failed to identify the correct level, location or levers of brand switching – and that it had cost them millions in lost revenues. 

Our experience is that 2 perspectives are needed to identify the truth of brand switching:

• Customer Journey perspective: Understanding the customer journey and the degree to which brand preferences are created along the journey – and when they switch tells marketers where to focus messaging and promotional investments to make the biggest impact. 

• “In-the-Moment” vs. “Post-Purchase” research: Capturing brand purchase intent and actual brand purchase “in-the-moment” that a decision is made – not after. 

Customer Journey research is essential to helping understand the influences along the journey toward brand preference and selection – and with shoppers using online, social, media, phone and retail channels for information and purchasing, multiple of research methods are necessary to fully capture and assess the impacts.  Much of this research may exist for brands – but too much of it is “touchpoint-focused” and too little of it is “customer-journey focused”.  

“In-the-Moment” research required shop-along, eye-tracking and mobile ethnographic research to isolate the location and levers of the brand switching and determine who the brand “winners and losers” were “in-the-aisle”.  In-the-moment research approaches aren’t new – just a little more expensive than post-purchase research approaches – and a lot more valuable. 

Don’t let cost-focused procurement managers distract you from the valuable insights necessary for brand leadership.  Investing in “in-the-Moment” Customer Journey research has a huge ROI.  Leading companies are using customer journey research to identify and deliver real results:

• Revenue growth of 30% – 50%
• Retention improvements of 30 points
• NPS increases of 30-50 points

Brand Switching Research Services

If you are ready to stop estimating brand switching and start measuring it, Gold Research offers specialized brand switching research for CPG companies, retailers, and category teams. Our Gold Intercepts and Journey Mapping methodologies are designed to capture in-the-moment brand decisions at the shelf, in the aisle, and across the full customer journey, not retrospective accounts from post-purchase surveys.

We combine behavioral observation, mobile ethnography, eye-tracking, and neuroscience-based measurement tools to build a precise picture of where, when, and why shoppers switch brands in your category. Whether you are defending a leader brand against private label encroachment, launching a new product and need to know which competitor’s customers are most switchable, or trying to understand why your category share is eroding despite strong brand investment, we tailor the research design to your specific business question.

Leading companies are using customer journey research to identify and deliver real results: revenue growth of 30 to 50 percent, retention improvements of 30 points, and NPS increases of 30 to 50 points.

Q1: What is brand switching in retail?

Brand switching in retail is when a shopper who intended to buy one brand purchases a different brand instead. It happens at the point of decision, usually in the store aisle or at the online checkout moment. Brand switching is measurable through in-the-moment intercept research that captures the decision while it is happening, rather than through post-purchase surveys that rely on shopper recall.

Q2: Why do customers switch brands?

Customers switch brands for three main reasons: value pressure (price increases or competitor promotions), in-aisle triggers (shelf placement, packaging, private label alternatives, promotions), and relevance drift (the brand no longer fits the customer’s current needs). Research from Capgemini (January 2025) found that 70 percent of consumers have switched brands because they enjoy experimenting, indicating that switching is not always driven by dissatisfaction but by curiosity and openness to alternatives.

Q3: How do in-store promotions affect brand switching?

In-store promotions are the most common trigger for a brand switch, but they rarely act alone. Our intercept research shows that promotions cause a switch when the shopper is already wavering due to accumulated price sensitivity, curiosity about the alternative, or gradual dissatisfaction. The promotion is the final nudge. Post-purchase surveys typically attribute the switch to the promotion alone because that is what the shopper remembers, but in-the-moment research reveals the underlying causes that built up over multiple shopping trips.

Q4: What is the difference between brand loyalty and brand switching?

Brand loyalty and brand switching coexist in the same shopper. Loyalty is category-specific, not person-specific: a consumer can be loyal to one brand in a category and switch freely in another. According to EY, brands are not important in 48 percent of purchase decisions, and recent retail data shows 60 percent of shoppers ditched a loyal brand in the past year. The brands that maintain loyalty are those that identify the specific moments where switching pressure is highest and build targeted responses for those moments.

Q5: How do you measure brand switching accurately?

Accurate measurement of brand switching requires in-the-moment research, not post-purchase surveys. Gold Research uses proprietary Gold Intercepts methodology combining shop-along observation, eye-tracking, and mobile ethnographic research to capture brand decisions at the exact moment they happen. This approach identifies the location, levers, and triggers of switching with a level of precision that recall-based methods cannot match. In one case study, post-purchase research estimated switching at 20 percent while in-the-moment intercept research found it at 70 percent in one channel and over 50 percent in another.

Call 1-800-549-7170 or send an email to nitin@goldresearchinc.com for a free consultation on this topic.

Gold Research is an award-winning Customer Journey Management firm with extensive experiences in B2C and B2B journey mapping, path-to-purchase research with a special focus in deploying “real-time” and behavioral/neuroscience research formats to gather in-the-moment customer insights.