Deal proneness and heavy usage: Merging two market segmentation criteria

The relationship of two different market segmentation criteria is investigated in order to establish a more powerful segmentation tool. These two segmentation criteria are level of consumer use of the product (a volume criterion) and consumer deal proneness (a market factor criterion). A two-year purchase diary of over 6200 households in a national probability sample forms the data base of this research. In general, it was found that deal-prone consumers tend to be heavy users and that light users are significantly less deal prone. Implications for management are discussed.