Those reading contributions by High Yield Insights in recent months have no doubt noticed a recurring focus on CBD consumers and related issues. This is due to a combination of ongoing interest (and controversy) both within and increasingly outside the cannabis industry on the efficacy, safety, and availability of all CBD products. As has been reported elsewhere, High Yield’s research from earlier this year gauged the product and shopping preferences among current CBD consumers. The study uncovered a range of insights surrounding how consumers perceive CBD brands. What hasn’t been previously discussed, however, is how that mindset regarding brands differs depending on the consumer’s engagement with CBD.

This may sound intuitive: those using more frequently will not have the same perspective of occasional users. And this does prove to be the case:

Of the respondents to a recent study, no more than ~ 9% of frequent CBD product consumers struggled to identify one or more brands used recently. (Including daily – once or multiple times daily – users and consumers using CBD regularly, defined as one to multiple times per week.) But when the usage frequency drops multiple times per month or less, brand recall suffers drastically. Given the power of word-of-mouth in the world of cannabis, that many consumers using CBD as a spot solution (perhaps for sleeplessness that comes and goes) can’t recall a brand name could be worrisome.

Perhaps the more surprising result are the sheer variety of brands CBD consumers are exploring as quantified below. 

Daily users are playing a major role in driving product diversity on the market. This ties to what’s known regarding more frequent CBD users: different products suit different needs. Thus it stands daily users (especially those that use CBD multiple times throughout the day) have adopted different brands based on a combination of brand and form preferences. Having discovered, often via guess-and-check, the range of issues that can be addressed by CBD these super users are curating an all-day experience. Peeling back one layer reveals this to be the case: of consumers who report using CBD multiple times daily, the average number of brands used in the past two weeks jumps to 3.4, about a 30 percent increase.

The groundswell of interest in, and passion for, CBD will be a tremendous factor as numerous consumers transition from sporadic to regular users. Today’s occasional user will be tomorrow’s regular user and with increased frequency comes not only additional forms of product (in part because relatively few brands have a foot in numerous categories) but also adoption of a broader set of brands. Niche brands have reason to believe that, with investment to become and remain “sticky” in the mind of the consumer, frequent CBD users can discover the brand in the course of that curation process. Meanwhile more established brands will be eyeing other parts of the day and other unique needs that can be addressed by developing a new solution under the brand umbrella. The push-and-pull between those two dynamics will unfold as CBD grows in visibility and acceptance.