Cite as: 519 U. S. 278 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
ships and domestic salmon canners, who shipped interstate into the same markets served by the freezer ships. Since the canners were taxed even more heavily than the freezer ships, there was no unfavorable burden upon the latter. Id., at 204. Although the Court's opinion did not discuss the possibility that competition in the domestic fresh-frozen market might have occurred in the absence of the tax disparity between the two types of salmon freezers, the freezer ships had made no attempt to compete in that market and neither claimed nor demonstrated an interest in entering it. See Brief for Respondents in Alaska v. Arctic Maid, O. T. 1960, No. 106, pp. 27-33.
Arctic Maid provides a partial analogy to this case. Here, natural gas marketers did not serve the Ohio LDCs' core market of small, captive users, typified by residential consumers who want and need the bundled product. See, e. g., Darr, A State Regulatory Strategy for the Transitional Phase of Gas Regulation, 12 Yale J. Reg. 69, 99 (1995) ("[T]he large core residential customer base is bound to the LDC in what currently appears to be a natural-monopoly relationship"); App. 199 (a marketer from which GMC purchased gas does not hold itself out to the general public as a gas supplier, but rather selectively contacts industrial end users that it has identified as potentially profitable customers). While this captive market is not geographically distinguished from the area served by the independent marketers, it is defined economically as comprising consumers who are captive to the need for bundled benefits. These are buyers who live on sufficiently tight budgets to make the stability of rate important, and who cannot readily bear the risk of losing a fuel supply in harsh natural or economic weather. See, e. g., Consolidated Edison Co. of N. Y. v. FERC, 676 F. 2d 763, 766, n. 5 (CADC 1982) ("[R]esidential users [of natural gas cannot] switch temporarily to other fuels and so they must endure cold homes" if their gas supply is interrupted); Samuels, Reliability of Natural Gas Service for Cap-
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