You are a research analyst for the Virgil Group. The Virgil Group has its hand in a lot of...

You are a research analyst for the Virgil Group. The Virgil Group has its hand in a lot of industries – including soft drink, music, clothing, phones, airlines … even space travel! The CEO Richie Brandon has approached you to conduct research into two possible new categories for Virgil. The first task relates to the toothpaste category. Virgil is looking to take over an existing brand – which currently has the third largest share in the category. You have been given a data set of 2,500 shoppers, which reports for each shopper his/her purchases of a set of brands over one year. The data set can be found on the website. Using the data set discuss and answer the following questions. (a) Are there niche brands in the market? (b) When looking to grow the brand, is it more important for Virgil to focus on selling more to existing customers or attracting new customers? The data set will be available on the course web site.