Segmentation is an essential tool to solve market and social research problems. Two decades ago, marketers and business prognosticators began to envision a world of one to one marketing, essentially where businesses would communicate with, and cater to, their customers one at a time. Segmentation is also helpful when there is a need to identify and define populations being served by not-for-profits and government ministries and agencies, helping them to best communicate and serve diverse groups.
New and evolving marketing and media channels now allow organizations to target small, coherent groups or segments with unprecedented precision.
But how do you define or identify segments in the first place? While geographic, demographic, ethnic and other ‘simple’ segmentation schema are appropriate in some cases, Advanis typically advocates that individuals be grouped according to the fundamental needs and attitudes that drive their purchase/consumption/usage decisions. Grouping individuals according to their core/basic needs, as well as enduring personal characteristics, can lead to powerful and sometimes unexpected insights for not just marketers, but also product designers, customer relationship managers, business strategists, and policy analysts and planners.
It’s often said that segmentation is both an art and a science, and we don’t disagree. The science side is about selecting and applying the right clustering techniques to give shape and order to your market data. Our analysts are experts in understanding and using these tools.
The art of segmentation–from working closely with clients to identify the right mix of potential segment drivers, through to selecting and interpreting the right segment solution– comes from experience, and we have that too. Over the past decade, Advanis has designed and implemented segmentation studies in wireless and wireline telephony, retail, agriculture, food, and many other industries.
Please contact us to find out how we can help you with your market segmentation needs.
