Açaí pulp is one of the main foods in the State of Pará and of higher per capita consumption in 2010. The sale of açaí in Belém is carried out by several units that operate in the retail market. The objective of this study was to identify market segments: greengrocers, micro entrepreneurs and supermarkets, from the analysis of a set of variables that define the decisions of açaí consumers. The stepwise multiple discriminant analysis was used to estimate the discriminant functions. Results show that the segment identified with greater precision was the greengrocery, with 100%, followed by supermarkets, with 96.5% of the cases accurately classified, and the segment of micro entrepreneurs, with 90.9%, had the lowest accuracy in the consumer classification. The estimated model showed a high significance in the estimation process, since the functions with the variables amount of açaí, consumer income, price of açaí, quality of açaí, price of fish and price of flour, correctly classified 95.6% of the original elements.
Consumption of açaí; multivariate analysis; discriminant score
