Retail-consumer commitment and market segmentation

Customer's commitment has become a main mediating goal for many companies. It appears to be a promising market segmentation criterion. In this sense, the present work focuses on commitment as a possible criterion to segment the consumers' market. It starts by analysing the importance of consumer commitment for companies. After the review of the literature of commitment at different relationship levels, a definition and a multidimensional structure is proposed for this construct. The study performs a segmentation analysis of bank customers. Three clusters of clients are identified according to their level of commitment. Main conclusions and its implications for marketing management are pointed out.