Segmentation (Marketing)

Overview Market segmentation is foundational to marketing: as scholars and managers contend, its concept "is built into the fabric of marketing" (Gibson 2001, 21). Segmentation is the process through which a company's actual and prospect customers are split into subgroups (i.e. segments), each of them showing similar consumption behaviors that differ across subgroups (Peter and Donnelly 2008). Differentiation (i.e. the process leading to variations of a company's offer) and targeting (i.e. the decision of which segments to serve by means of differentiated offers; Pride and Ferrell 2004) are meaningful only when customers have heterogeneous preferences, that is, only when a market is segmentable. Subdividing and profiling market segments help identify the customers to serve, the most effective way to satisfy their specific needs/desires, the competitors to face, the resources requested to compete in each segment, and the main stakeholders to involve in order to reinforce a company's market legitimacy (Cucurean-Zapan 2014; Lambin 1998). In simpler terms, market segmentation helps perform a company's market-orientation. While segmentation is still central to today's marketing, the profound transformations as much as the rising opportunities of contemporary markets and societies ask for a profound revision of segmentation theory and practice (Arnould and Cayla 2015; Gibson 2001; Kannisto 2016). Answering to this call, the chapter's aims are twofold. First, we approach segmentation historically, in order to unveil which were, and somehow still are, its often-implicit grounding premises. We show that most of these premises sway when confronted to extant cultural, economic, and technological environments, and invite for revision. The first part of the chapter (§ 18.2) thus provides readers with a longitudinal understanding of market segmentation and with evidences motivating the requested revision. Second, by focusing on contemporary trajectories of revision, we approach segmentation epistemologically, that is, we contrast two opposite perspectives on the needed revisions of market segmentation (§ 18.1). On the one hand, the marketing science perspective combines big data-driven consumer knowledge (cf. chapter 26 by Zwick and Dholakia) and the power of new technologies (especially, of artificial intelligence) to reinvigorate and transform segmentation (Mandelli 2018). Within this perspective, segmentation-as-science goes micro-basically, at a one-to-one level-and (hyper)targeting (Hoffmann, Inderst, and Ottaviani 2013) results into personalization, interpretable as the radicalization of mass-customization (Flavin and Heller 2019). On the other hand, hailing from the cultural marketing perspective (Peñaloza, Toulouse, and Visconti 2012), segmentation evolves into a set of decisions that marketers co-construct with customers. In line with this dialogical posture, targeting then requires conversational abilities (Jarratt and Fayed 2012) not only to reach, but also to engage target customers.

Tax rebates are instruments for stimulating consumer spending during recessions. Previous research assessed whether consumers use tax rebates for saving or, alternatively, purchasing goods and services. These studies concentrated on aggregate estimations. Based on the saving motive hierarchy suggested in the economic psychology literature, other theories on saving motives and based on acquisition pattern analysis, we propose that consumers can be segmented on the purposes for which they use a tax rebate. We apply Latent Class Analysis to segment consumers in Australia according to their allocation of the 2009 government rebate, which was paid as a tax bonus, across a broad set of expenditure categories. The analysis reveals segments with different spending patterns, including segments we have labeled as ‘investors’, ‘travelers’, ‘debt-payers’, and four other segments. Segment membership is explained using a mix of socio-demographic variables, annual category expenditures, and psychological factors (materialism and consumer confidence). We discuss implications for policymakers and marketing.

El marketing es clave para todas las empresas. De las decisiones de marketing que tomen dependerá que se relacionen de manera eficiente con los consumidores, desplieguen propuestas de valor que satisfagan las necesidades de los consumidores de un modo superior a la competencia, se responsabilicen de las consecuencias de sus actividades de negocio y generen beneficios. Este libro expone principios y estrategias fundamentales del marketing actual, con los que se obtienen conocimientos útiles sobre el mercado, se segmenta y selecciona el mercado objetivo, se posiciona la marca sobre ventajas competitivas sostenibles y se crea valor para los consumidores. De la mano de situaciones de negocio reales, también se presentan las últimas tendencias en marketing móvil y de medios sociales, en marketing relacional, en la orientación a la creación de valor y en la ética y la responsabilidad social en marketing.

The purpose of the paper is to segment Finnish ski resort visitors according to ski destination choice attributes using data-driven segmentation. In addition, segments are compared in order to ascertain possible differences in personal (gender and age) and situation-specific (type of visitor and traveling companion) characteristics between customer segments. The data were collected from visitors to five different ski resorts in Lapland Finland during the years 2006 and 2007 by self-administered questionnaire. Altogether 1827 responses were collected of which 1529 were acceptable for use in this study. Six different customer segments were identified using the factor-cluster method: passive tourists, cross-country skiers, want-it-all, all-but-downhill skiing, sports seekers, and relaxation seekers. At the end of the paper conclusions are drawn and managerial implications discussed.