<P> Market penetration can be defined as the proportion of people in the target who bought (at least once in the period) a specific brand or a category of goods . Two key measures of a product's' popularity' are penetration rate and penetration share . The penetration rate (also called penetration, brand penetration or market penetration as appropriate) is the percentage of the relevant population that has purchased a given brand or category at least once in the time period under study . A brand's penetration share, in contrast to penetration rate, is determined by comparing that brand's customer population to the number of customers for its category in the relevant market as a whole . Here again, to be considered a customer, one must have purchased the brand or category at least once during the period . </P> <P> The penetration that brands and products have can be recorded by companies such as Kantar Worldpanel and ACNielsen who offer panel measurement services to calculate this and other consumer measures . In these cases penetration is given as a percentage of a country's households who have bought that particular brand or product at least once within a defined period of time . </P>

The existence of many competitors in any one market segment may indicate