Lapsed Buyer Conversion

Lapsed Buyer Conversion is a marketing and retail strategy focused on re-engaging consumers who previously purchased a brand but have not done so within a specific timeframe (e.g., over a year). In the context of the evolving beverage industry, this concept has emerged as a powerful defensive benefit of launching non-alcoholic master-brand extensions.

Rather than simply causing cannibalization of existing sales, non-alcoholic variants can act as a hook to bring former customers back into the brand’s ecosystem. This is increasingly executed through retail-media-networks (RMNs) utilizing first-party shopper data.

Case Study: Heineken and GPA

A prominent example of this strategy was executed by heineken-nv in Brazil. Utilizing first-party data from the retailer gpa, Heineken targeted shoppers who had a high affinity for the Heineken brand but had lapsed in their purchasing. By promoting heineken-0-0 to this specific segment, the campaign generated 20% of its total conversions from lapsed buyers. Furthermore, re-engaging these shoppers demonstrated a halo effect on overall brand engagement, resulting in a 57% increase in the average ticket size for returning buyers.