captive market

British

noun

a group of consumers who are obliged through lack of choice to buy a particular product, thus giving the supplier a monopoly

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

They have a captive market and they don't want to share it.

From BBC • May 5, 2022

They created a captive market of battery customers.

From New York Times • Dec. 22, 2021

But its status as the country’s largest residential mortgage servicer gives it ample opportunity to exploit this captive market.

From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 19, 2021

“Somehow because people in prison are a captive market, the same concerns which I think ought to be raised aren’t usually raised for them,” she said.

From Slate • Jul. 19, 2018

Libraries were a captive market, and journals had improbably installed themselves as the gatekeepers of scientific prestige – meaning that scientists couldn’t simply abandon them if a new method of sharing results came along.

From The Guardian • Jun. 27, 2017

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023