The stability and sales contribution of heavy-buying households

Creating long-term heavy buyers underpins many theories of consumer behaviour and marketing plans. This makes heavy-buying households an attractive target for research and marketing activities. However, analysis across over 150 brands in 15 categories reveals that only around 50 per cent of the heavy-buying households of a brand in 1year to remain heavy brand buyers in the next year. This provides a benchmark for marketers implementing strategies to reduce leakage from heavy-buyer segmentations. This result, however, casts doubt on the reliability of heavy buying as a household/buyer targeting characteristic and calls into question the idea that long-term heavy brand buyers can be cultivated. There is evidence that category heavy buying is consistently more stable behaviour, averaging 67 per cent year-on-year buyer stability. Therefore, if heavy buying behaviour is a targeting characteristic, the results support the use of category buying, rather than brand buying weight. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.