Brand managers within marketing organizations are frequently concerned with the relative performances of their products. Brands which are out-performing firm and industry sales need to be identified; the same is true for slow growth or no-growth brands. A similar problem exists with respect to regional economies. What are the leading industries? Have they out-performed the nation's growth rate? What are the lagging sectors? Regional economists have developed a technique for describing the sources of growth by industry. Shift-share analysis identifies components of growth for individual units within the setting of a larger market. This article describes the traditional shift-share technique and illustrates its possible usefulness to brand managers use by applying the techniques to sales data for U.S. cigarette producers.