Category Entry Points (CEPs): Definition and Tips
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2025 3:30 am
How do you ensure that people think of your business precisely at the moment they are planning to buy? That's an important question entrepreneurs should be asking themselves. Category Entry Points (CEPs) play an important role in this regard. In this article, we explain what CEPs are and how you can use them as an entrepreneur.
What are CEPs?
CEPs stands for Category Entry Points. They are so-called "cues" or leads that cause a consumer to think of your brand in a buying situation (Romaniuk, 2021).
CEPs can be either intrinsic or triggered by external situations. For example, a beer brand's CEP may be "thirst" (intrinsic motivation) or "a warm summer day" (external situation). So a CEP is actually a need, and you as a brand, product or company want to be the first to come to mind in response to that need.
Of course, every buyer and every buying situation is unique, but every brand has recurring CEPs. As a marketer, it's nice to know what cues make someone think of your brand. What links or associations are there in someone's mind? What triggers the thought of your brand? And how do you make sure the association is strong enough that it comes up during a kazakhstan mobile numbers list buying situation? Because once this association is made, it can stay there for decades.
Examples in practice
According to Romaniuk and Sharp (2000), you can use five relevant questions (5 W's) to find out what the CEPs of your brand or product are:
Why?
When?
Where?
With whom?
With what?
Take the example of 4 hours of Cup-a-Soup. If we look at the 5 W's there, you get the following answers:
Why: consumer is hungry but it is not yet time for dinner
When: just before dinner
Where: often at work
With whom: often with colleagues
With what: often behind the laptop
As a marketer, it is important to create as many CEPs as possible so that as many associations as possible can be created at the time a consumer wants to buy something. How often people think of your brand is what Romaniuk and Sharp call a brand's "mental market share.
What are CEPs?
CEPs stands for Category Entry Points. They are so-called "cues" or leads that cause a consumer to think of your brand in a buying situation (Romaniuk, 2021).
CEPs can be either intrinsic or triggered by external situations. For example, a beer brand's CEP may be "thirst" (intrinsic motivation) or "a warm summer day" (external situation). So a CEP is actually a need, and you as a brand, product or company want to be the first to come to mind in response to that need.
Of course, every buyer and every buying situation is unique, but every brand has recurring CEPs. As a marketer, it's nice to know what cues make someone think of your brand. What links or associations are there in someone's mind? What triggers the thought of your brand? And how do you make sure the association is strong enough that it comes up during a kazakhstan mobile numbers list buying situation? Because once this association is made, it can stay there for decades.
Examples in practice
According to Romaniuk and Sharp (2000), you can use five relevant questions (5 W's) to find out what the CEPs of your brand or product are:
Why?
When?
Where?
With whom?
With what?
Take the example of 4 hours of Cup-a-Soup. If we look at the 5 W's there, you get the following answers:
Why: consumer is hungry but it is not yet time for dinner
When: just before dinner
Where: often at work
With whom: often with colleagues
With what: often behind the laptop
As a marketer, it is important to create as many CEPs as possible so that as many associations as possible can be created at the time a consumer wants to buy something. How often people think of your brand is what Romaniuk and Sharp call a brand's "mental market share.