CRISight: Seeing Cannibalisation Before it Happens

New product sales do not always represent new growth. A new offering can create primary demand, attract customers from competitors, shift purchases across time, or transfer demand from the firm's own products. This article develops CRISight, a proposed pre-launch cannibalisation risk framework that brings these demand sources into one structured decision system. The framework is grounded in established cannibalisation measurement, demand decomposition, brand-extension research, consumer consideration, perceived value, usage occasion, channel access and portfolio branding. It proposes seven core risk dimensions: Customer-Segment Overlap, Internal Switching Propensity, Product and Benefit Similarity, Price and Perceived-Value Proximity, Usage-Occasion Overlap, Channel and Market-Access Overlap, and Brand and Portfolio Proximity. A formative higher-order risk index is proposed, while Evidence Confidence and Strategic Cannibalisation Tolerance are reported separately so that weak evidence or managerial willingness does not artificially change the underlying risk. The paper also clarifies the difference between a pre-launch risk score and a realised post-launch cannibalisation rate. Initial weights should be treated as provisional; final weights, thresholds and category benchmarks require empirical calibration against post-launch demand-source outcomes. A multi-study validation programme is proposed, covering qualitative domain specification, content validation, measurement purification, discrete-choice testing and longitudinal predictive validation. The article contributes an integrated, transparent and testable architecture for moving cannibalisation analysis from retrospective diagnosis towards pre-launch portfolio decision support.

cannibalisation; brand extension; line extension

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