Having a blinkered focus on any one metric is never a good thing. It can create an unbalanced view of what good looks like. Market share has been criticised as a metric linked to short-termism, yet it remains a crucial commercial goal for many marketing departments.

According to this year’s Language of Effectiveness survey, in partnership with Kantar and Google, almost three in five (57.9%) of the over 1,000 brand marketers surveyed say growing market share is one of the most important priorities of marketing.

But this focus on market share – the top metric in the Language of Effectiveness surveys for three years running – has been criticised by the likes of Carlsberg CMO Yves Briantais and Mars Food and Nutrition CMO Matt Graham as “dangerous” and leading to a “vicious cycle” with competitors based on short-term tactics.

Both are marketing leaders at FMCG organisations operating in mature categories and, therefore, believe growing those categories is more important than winning share to deliver sustainable long-term growth.

[Market share] was a measure talked about at analyst meetings and in business updates, because it’s important.

Pete Markey, former Boots CMO

However, in many sectors, such as retail, driving market share is of paramount importance.

Until recently, Pete Markey was chief marketing officer at Boots, a brand that drove 17 consecutive quarters of market share growth in its category. The metric was highly valued by external, as well as internal stakeholders, notes Markey.

“That was a measure talked about at analyst meetings and in business updates, because it’s important,” he says. “It shows that you are growing your own business, but also you are growing your share of that business versus your competition.”

Likewise for the UK’s biggest supermarket Tesco, market share is always going to be a top priority, says Alessandra Bellini, who departed as chief customer officer of the retailer in September 2023.

Both Bellini and Markey explain market share contextualises brands’ growth. For example, in categories enjoying a period of strong growth, revenue growth might come relatively easily, but others in the category might be driving even higher revenues. Likewise, in mature categories seeing deflation, market share can provide guidance as to how a brand is performing versus its competitive set.

‘Shorthand for growth’

While for mature, market leading brands growing the category is essential, for challenger brands it’s more about disrupting the category and winning share.

Who Gives A Crap is one such brand, disrupting the toilet roll category with its eco-friendly, colourful rolls. Having started life as a DTC brand, the business is now stocked by many major retailers and is the third-biggest brand in the category.

Marketing director David Titman understands there could be “danger” in focusing solely on market share, but believes it may have been a popular option for Language of Effectiveness respondents because it acts as a “proxy” for growth.

“Market share is a really interesting one in that it’s the ‘easiest’ shorthand for successful growth, because it’s competitive growth,” he says, explaining it does provide a good indicator of competitiveness.

Why focusing on market share may lead marketers down a ‘dangerous’ path

Titman acknowledges that brands solely focused on market share risk falling victim to short-sightedness. This is also the message from Markey.

“My view is you’ve always got to look at a series of measures, not just one,” he states, insisting good marketers will look at a whole dashboard of metrics.

Market share is important, Markey adds, but a business must use other metrics like cash flow, profit and margin to ensure that the dynamic does not become “market share at all costs”.

That was one of the issues around a focus on market share raised by Graham, namely that the pursuit of share above anything else may lead to destructive cycles where brands end up cutting prices to compete directly with rivals.

It should always be bespoke to what the firm’s strategy is overall and then over the next 12 months, what are the specific objectives of the company?

Lee Grunnell, Womble Bond Dickinson

Brands can avoid this by remaining firm on an “overall pricing strategy”, says Markey, adding that market mix modelling can guide businesses on their promotional strategy.

Retailers may lean on promotions to drive market share, but this doesn’t necessarily have to be done with a short-term mindset, says Bellini. How Tesco approached its Clubcard Prices advertising is an example. Pointing out this is essentially price promotion work, Bellini explains that when she was at Tesco she always made sure this was on brand.

“The idea that when you do price promotion you don’t care, you can do some horrible stuff and then you reserve all your beautiful things for the other stuff, it’s just wrong,” she adds.

While Bellini rejects the idea that price promotion has to be done with a short-term mindset, Titman questions whether discounting really is a shortcut to growing market share.

He points to the fact most market share is measured on a value basis, meaning consumers must spend more with your brand versus your competitors to drive share. If brands are engaging in deep discounting this may well drive volume and shift product, but may harm the value they are generating versus the competition unless other brands follow suite.

‘Bespoke’ business objectives

To be recognised in businesses as a crucial lever for success, marketing must be attuned to what success looks like for their business.

Kunal Mehta is global head of marketing, communication and brand at DSM-Firmenich, a B2B science company. Deciding whether market share ought to be a key focus for marketing is determined by where a brand is on its “journey”, he says. Marketing ought to closely monitor the overall goals of the business and adjust its aims accordingly.

This is something agreed upon by Lee Grunnell, CMO at law firm Womble Bond Dickinson UK. He describes the job of marketing, broadly, as being “identifying and meeting customer needs in a way that delivers value for the customer and your organisation”.

“It should always be bespoke to what the firm’s strategy is overall and then over the next 12 months, what are the specific objectives of the company?” Grunnell says.

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For Carlsberg and Mars, from a total business point of view it makes more sense to focus on growing the categories they operate in to drive growth, rather than looking to take market share.

However, less than a fifth (19.7%) of Language of Effectiveness respondents view category growth as a primary objective, suggesting few marketers are on the same page

While growing the market may be key for some brands, influencing the category is just not a realistic ambition for others, says Bellini, who worked for many years at Unilever before taking on the top marketing role at Tesco.

“Sometimes you can’t influence the market,” she says. “Take the price of milk, that is set by global forces. You don’t influence it in marketing; you can only deal with it.”

Hard to move the needle

Category growth is something both retailers and brands aspire to, making it a mutually beneficial goal for both sides.

Titman notes that category growth is “pretty tough to move” in the toilet roll category. Its obviously a category that is highly penetrated and has high private label share. There are also limited extra benefits a brand can bring to the category, although he points to longer roll sizes as one advantage to Who Gives A Crap.

All this makes it “notoriously difficult” to drive category growth in toilet roll. What Who Gives A Crap brings to the category is “an injection of fun” and something different to what is a pretty utilitarian category, Titman claims.

It’s real slog to move the needle on behaviour change and, therefore, properly grow category value.

David Titman, Who Gives A Crap

The brand also offers value to retailers by bringing consumers back in store, he notes. As a company that was originally solely DTC, Who Gives A Crap had been taking consumers away from buying into the category via retailers. Therefore, its partnership with retailers is a draw back to shelf for those who customers attracted away from stores.

Before his time at Who Gives A Crap, Titman spent time at FMCG giants Unilever and Pladis. Regardless of what market you’re talking about, “category growth is hard”, he adds.

“It’s real slog to move the needle on behaviour change and, therefore, properly grow category value,” he says.

It can be easier to make a difference on market share, Titman notes. This doesn’t mean marketers should be solely focused on this metric, but rather market share is something they can drive in the medium-term while balancing other goals.

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