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AbstractCreating 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 1 year 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 © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.