Categories Have Different Purposes

In a recent project, I wanted to see if merchandise categories played different roles for the brand. In other words, did some categories drive new customers while other categories "stole" new customers?

Column "LY Give" tells us the percentage of customers who bought from that category last year and then bought the following year from a different category without coming back to the category they bought from. For this brand, categories with fewer buyers are more likely to "give" their customers to other categories. The most popular category (labeled 17 above) does not give customers away. Hmmmm.

Column "TY Take" tells us the percentage of this year's customer base that was taken from other categories. Notice that the categories that give customers away also take customers from other categories. Those categories are not "sticky", are they?

Column "TY Keep" calculates the percentage of this year's customer base (within the category) that also purchased from the category last year. The best performing categories (number of customers) are better at "keeping" their customers.

Column "TY N/R" calculates the percentage of this year's customer base (within the category) that did not buy last year across any categories. Here's a little secret I've learned over the decades ... it is important for your best categories to bring in new/reactivated customers. There are categories that "can" bring in a lot of new/reactivated customers, but that category needs to be good at "giving" customers to other categories.

You analyze your categories and know the role of each category within your brand, right?