Who rules the portfolio animal kingdom?

Brand portfolios come in many shapes and sizes.
To try and provide some structure we have distinguished between five types of players competing in a specific category:

• Large predators are single brand players which reach 10% of a category’s buyers.
• Small predators are single brand players which do not reach 10% of a category’s buyers.
• Prides are multi-brand portfolios where one brand crosses this 10% threshold, but all other brands are substantially smaller (less than half of the largest brand’s reach).
• Pairs compete with a portfolio that contains two rather big brands (one needs to achieve 10% relative penetration with another one reaching at least half that many buyers).
• Packs are multi-brand portfolios of which none reaches 10% of category buyers.

While the single-brand portfolios dominate in number (about two thirds of all manufacturers across ten European markets compete with one brand only), the majority of sales goes to multi-brand portfolios. Pairs, for example, are a rare species (only about 3% of all manufacturers compete with a pair) in both Germany and the UK, but they capture a large part of the prey: 20% of branded FMCG sales in Germany and 28% in the UK.

Data source: NB sales by top 30 manufacturers in 90 categories in 2019.