Consideration Set — What It Is, Why It's Limited & A Better Alternative

Definition (≤25 words). A consideration set is the small group of brands a buyer actively thinks of as options for a particular purchase in a particular category.

TL;DR. When a buyer faces a buying decision, they don't mentally scan every brand in the market — they scan a shortlist. That shortlist is the consideration set, and it is almost always small: a handful of brands at most. Getting into it is the precondition for being bought. The classical marketing response was to ask buyers "which brands would you consider?" and grow that list. The Ehrenberg-Bass evidence, set out by Romaniuk and Sharp in How Brands Grow 2 (2016), says that's a blunt and unstable measure — and offers category entry points as the sharper, more actionable replacement. Either way, the lesson is the same: growth comes from being thought of in more situations by more people, not from deepening loyalty among the few who already consider you.

What is a consideration set, and how small is it?

The concept is older than the modern evidence. Howard and Sheth's The Theory of Buyer Behavior (1969) introduced the "evoked set" — the brands a consumer knows about and would consider for a given purchase. The idea survived because it matches introspection: nobody evaluates all 40 cereals or all 200 car models. They evaluate a few, and choose among them.

The robust empirical finding is that consideration sets are small. In most categories, a buyer's set runs to single figures — often just a few brands — even when the market contains dozens. The brands outside the set are, for that purchase, effectively invisible. This is why market penetration matters so much: a brand that most buyers never think of is a brand that most buyers never buy.

There's a useful way to frame the mechanism. Buying is partly a memory-and-attention problem. When a buying situation arises, the brands that come to mind first and most readily form the de facto set. Everything we know about mental availability — the probability a brand is thought of in a buying situation — tells us that those top-of-mind brands enjoy a structural advantage. They are considered because they were remembered; they were remembered because their distinctive assets and category cues are strong and numerous.

How does the consideration set relate to loyalty and repertoire buying?

Here the popular story goes wrong. The textbook implication of the consideration set was that brands should fight for "share of the consideration set" by building loyalty — getting buyers to make your brand the dominant, ideally sole, member of their set.

The Ehrenberg-Bass data complicates that. Buyers don't typically have a fixed, loyal set. They have a repertoire — they buy a rotating cast of brands over time, and the "set" flexes with situation, occasion, and which brands are mentally available right now. The same person buys different coffee brands on different days, switches insurance providers every few years, and picks a hotel chain when it's available and something else when it isn't.

This is the duplication of purchase pattern: brands share customers with each other roughly in proportion to their market share, which only happens if buyers are promiscuous and sets are porous. Loyalty, in the sense of exclusive devotion to one brand, is rarer and weaker than marketing folklore admits. What looks like loyalty is often just a small repertoire with your brand currently in it.

The implication for brands is bracing: your job is not to lock buyers into an exclusive set. It is to enter more buyers' sets across more situations — and to stay there.

Why is the consideration set a tricky thing to measure?

Ask a buyer "which brands do you consider?" and you get an answer. The trouble is that the answer is shaky, for several reasons:

1. It's retrospective and rationalised. People reconstruct a tidy list after the fact, omitting brands they bought on impulse or because of availability.
2. It varies by situation. The brands considered for a quick lunchtime snack differ from those considered for a weekend dinner party. A single "consideration set" hides that variance.
3. It blends recall and recognition. A brand someone recognises when prompted isn't necessarily one they'd think of unprompted — and unprompted recall is what drives most purchases.
4. It's a state, not a trait. Sets shift as mental availability, advertising, and availability on shelf change. A snapshot freezes a moving target.

These measurement problems are exactly why Romaniuk and Sharp argue the construct is less useful than it looks as a planning tool.

What's the better alternative — and why?

In How Brands Grow 2 (2016), Romaniuk and Sharp propose category entry points (CEPs) as the upgrade. A category entry point is a buying situation, need, or cue — "a drink when I'm tired," "a gift for a birthday," "something quick for the kids" — and the question becomes not "who is in your set?" but "which brands come to mind for which situations?"

CEPs solve the consideration-set's problems. They are situation-specific (fixing the "it varies" problem), they're measured as unprompted brand recall per situation (fixing the recall/recognition confusion), and they multiply: a brand can build mental availability across many entry points, which is precisely how penetration grows. The more buying situations your brand is linked to, the more often it enters the de facto consideration set — automatically, because it was remembered.

So the modern move is: stop chasing an abstract "consideration" score and start mapping which category entry points you own, which you're weak on, and how to build more. That's a strategy an organisation can actually execute, with a metric it can actually track.

Where people get it wrong

• Assuming buyers have a stable, loyal set. They have a flexible repertoire. "Our loyal consideration set" is usually a smaller and leakier thing than the slide deck suggests.
• Measuring consideration by prompted recognition. Prompted awareness overstates real consideration, because most buying is driven by what springs to mind unaided.
• Trying to shrink the set to just your brand. Chasing exclusive loyalty is expensive and rarely works; growing your presence across sets and situations is what scales.
• Ignoring situation. A single aggregate "consideration" number hides that you might be strong at one occasion and invisible at another — and the invisible occasions are where the growth is.
• Treating "getting into the set" as the end goal rather than the mechanism. You enter the set because you were mentally available for that situation. Fix the mechanism (distinctive assets, CEPs, availability) and the set takes care of itself.

In practice — what to actually do

1. Map your category's buying situations (the category entry points), and score your brand's mental availability for each — unprompted.
2. Prioritise the entry points you're weak on but that matter (frequent, valuable, or where competitors are also weak), and build distinctive, consistent cues for them.
3. Invest in distinctive assets so that when a buying situation fires, your brand is the one that surfaces.
4. Don't over-invest in loyalty mechanics aimed at narrowing the set. Spend the bulk of the budget on reaching light and non-buyers to widen penetration.
5. Track consideration situation-by-situation, not as a single brand-health number — and watch whether your mental availability is broadening over time.

So what?

The consideration set is a real and important thing: if you're not in the shortlist, you can't be chosen. But as a management concept it's a blunt instrument — unstable to measure, blind to situation, and prone to channelling marketers towards loyalty theatre. The sharper question is which buying situations your brand comes to mind for, and how to add more. Ask that, build the mental availability to answer it, and the consideration set fills itself.

Evidence & sources

• Romaniuk, J. & Sharp, B. (2016). How Brands Grow 2. Oxford University Press — category entry points and the critique of the consideration-set construct.
• Sharp, B. (2010). How Brands Grow. Oxford University Press — repertoire buying, mental availability, and penetration as the engine of growth.
• Howard, J. & Sheth, J. (1969). The Theory of Buyer Behavior. — the original "evoked set" concept.
• Ehrenberg-Bass Institute publications on mental availability and category entry points.

Related terms

• Category Entry Points
• Mental Availability
• Market Penetration
• The Heavy Buyer Fallacy

Definition type: DefinedTerm. Reviewed: 2026-07-09. Written by Andrei Tarnovski for Boringly Effective. Fundamentals over fashion.