The New Market Segmentation

If you’re trying to segment your market in the traditional way, what you may be looking for would be groups of consumers sorted out in such a way that a certain likeness exists within each group, and a difference exists between them. The variable determining the meaningful likeness or difference between those groups would be the segmentation variable. A trivial segmentation variable, just for the sake of demonstration, would be hair color. However, after having segmented the customers into groups, it is reasonable to assume that you would expect to do something with it. Let’s say that you have decided to target a certain segment. You would probably want to do some marketing activities that will appeal to this segment, or else, to communicate some kind of enticing message to it. Sometimes, the segmentation variable could suffice for the purpose, (“listen to me, all you red-heads out there…”). In most cases (for instance, the segment of those who consume beer only out side their home), you would have to characterize your segment before you could address them. In other words, you would have to define what describes the customers in that segment, beyond your segmentation variable, and also, what makes them different from consumers in other market segments. The characterization of your segment is a task that is not the same as defining your segment. It is a distinct next step. But now, if you can be truly sincere with yourself, I’m convinced that you have already found out that it does not work.

So where did this idea, on which the conventional segmenting method is based, come from? In the distant past, and in traditional societies (sectarian) the people’s behavioral patterns were pretty much modeled by their affiliation to a certain gender, a nationality/tribe/race, a certain religion, a social/economic status, a profession, and an age group – much more than today, anyway. There were clear clusters of elements pertaining to appearance, general behavior and particularly consumption. Then, back in those days, if you knew one element of a particular cluster, you could quite easily guess the others. But all this has changed. As people are becoming gradually more individualistic, and as possibilities have multiplied, people have become less and less definable as types.