Summary
"Consumer insistence" was a term first coined by
Melvin Copeland in his article, "Relation of Consumers'
Buying Habits to Marketing Methods" in the Harvard
Business Review in 1923.1 In the article, Copeland
describes consumer insistence as an extreme form of brand loyalty
and demand manifestation such that when a "consumer approaches
the purchase of an article in this attitude of mind, he accepts no
substitute unless it is an emergency."2
The importance here is that insistence limits consumer switching
because consumers vehemently insist on certain brands.
Such brand owners have significant market power3 because
of the unlikelihood that these brand owners will lose customers to
competing brands. In such cases, this market power can lead the
brand owners (or their distributors) to restrain trade and raise
prices well above competitive levels.4 Therefore, the
implications of insistence are far-reaching in terms of the
economics and how we think about
