article 1: rediscovering market segmentation

Question 1

marketing segmentation

Answer 1

= guides companies in tailoring their product and service offerings to the groups most likely to purchase them
- Non-demographic traits like values, tastes, and preferences are more likely to influence consumers’ purchases than their demographic traits
- Important to broadening the use of segmentation beyond advertising to product innovation, pricing, and the choice of distribution channels
- Meaningful segmentations depend on finding patterns in your customers’ actual buying behaviour

Question 2

gathering of relevant data through questions

Answer 2

1. What are we trying to do?
2. Which customers drive profits?
   Three broad drivers of profitability are demographic (age, occupation), behavioural (services used, institutions visited, number of transactions), and attitudinal (financial sophistication, risk tolerance).
3. Which attitudes matter to the buying decision? Examine lifestyles, attitudes, self-image, and aspirations continually
4. What are my customers actually doing? heaviness of use, brand switching, or channel selection
5. Will this segmentation make sense to senior management?
6. Can our segmentation register change? Effective segmentation is dynamic because (1) customers’ needs, attitudes, and behaviour change and (2) they are reshaped by market conditions like fluctuating economics, niches, and new technologies
7. Which kinds of segmentation are best for which purposes?

Question 3

gravity of decision spectrum

Answer 3

= differences in business decisions, consumer
decisions, and approaches to segmentation that emerge as the gravity of a consumer’s buying decision increases

Question 4

3 failures in segmentation initiatives

Answer 4

1. Excessive interest in consumers’ identities.
2. Too little emphasis on actual consumer behaviour,
3. Undue absorption in the technical details of devising segmentations