Begoña Álvarez

Consumers' characteristics and brand choice behaviour: Loyalty and consumption

The research described in this paper is intended to provide a deeper understanding of consumers’ purchasing processes by describing a range of models that include the traditionally analysed variables of price, reference price and losses and gains and also by proposing two alternative ways to segment the market: by loyalty and by consumption levels. The key contributions of this research can be summarised under two points. First, it employs two different household panels to validate hypotheses and provide more reliable results, and secondly, it employs a market segment variable that is infrequently applied in this kind of work: consumption levels. Our results not only highlight the importance of the variables we propose but also point to the need to segment markets in line with a range of different criteria, given that both customer loyalty and consumption levels serve to show different purchasing patterns.