where n ih is the purchase occasions in which
household h has acquired brand i ; N h the
purchase occasions for household h ; L ih the loyalty
of household h to brand i .
Work by the likes of Mazumdar and Papatla 6,16
set household loyalty levels for brand purchase
at above 60 per cent of purchasing opportunities.
We, however, increased this threshold to 85
per cent in order to establish loyal and
non loyal household groups of approximately
similar sizes. Panel segmentation came out as
follows: for the national panel, loyal and
non loyal groups represent 59.92 and 40.08
per cent of the total sample, respectively. The
equivalent percentages for the regional panel
were 41.37 and 58.63 per cent.
The objective of the analysis was to confirm
whether establishing two groups of consumers
with different behaviours is acceptable in terms
of statistics. Chapman and Staelin , 29 Gensch 30,31
and Gensch and Javalgi 32 carried out research
in this field, dividing the initial sample into
small groups and applying the following
equation: