1. Geographic segmentation
Involves dividing the market according to geographic criteria—nations, states, regions, countries, languages, cities, neighborhoods, terrain ,population density, climates or postal codes. The geo-cluster approach combines demographic data with geographic data to create a more accurate or specific profile.
With respect to region, in rainy regions merchants can sell things like raincoats, umbrellas and gumboots. In hot regions, one can sell summer clothing. A small business commodity store may target only customers from the local neighborhood, while a larger department store can target its marketing towards several neighborhoods in a larger city or area, while ignoring customers in other continents.
It is important to segment according to geographic, due to the fact that the purchasing behaviour of the customers are influenced on where they live, work etc. Therefore many companies customize their products, advertising, promotion and sales efforts to fit the needs of the geographical variables
Geographic Segmentation is important and may be considered the first step to international marketing, followed by demographic and psychographic segmentation. The use of national boarders is the institutional use of geographic segmentation, although geographic segments may be classified by identified geological regions.
2.Demographic segmentation:
Grouping or dividing consumers on the basis of one or more demographic factors e.g. age, sex, race, income, occupation, socioeconomic status, religion, family size, family life cycle, education, generation, social class and nationality. The demographic segmentation is often used in market segmentation for the reason that the variables are easy to identify and measure. Furthermore the demographic variables are associated with sale of many products and services and finally they provide a description of the target customers so media buyers and others can target a desired target market.
3. Geo-demographic segmentation
Combines geographic and demographic segmentation that can either give the demographic characteristics of particular regions, neighborhoods and even streets or show the geographic spread of any demographic characteristics. This is made possible by using modern sophisticated data collection techniques and computing facilities (Geo-demographic systems allow marketers to profile their market (target) into a variety of interesting characteristics such as age, Income, employment, car ownership, vacation habits, newspaper readership, leisure interest and limited information on consumption habits.
Geo-demographic segmentation combines the geographic segmentation with the demographic segmentation and thereby combines the study of the target customers with where they live . Hence the geo-demographic classifies the customers according to where they live in comparison to the way the social class defines consumers by their occupation and thereby the companies are more capable of predicting consumer behaviour.
4. Psychographic segmentation
Involves dividing the market on the basis on the basis of psychographics or psychological profiles ( attitudes, values, behaviors, emotions, motives, perceptions, beliefs, lifestyles and interests) . Psychological profiles are often used as a supplement to geographic and demographics when these does not provide a sufficient view of the customer behaviour. While the traditional geographical and demographical bases (sex, age, income etc.) provide the marketer with accessibility to customer segments, the psychological variables provide additional information about these and enhance the understanding of the behaviour of present and potential target markets. Psychographic segmentation therefore divides people according to their personality, attitudes, values, lifestyles, interests and opinions . Furthermore some marketers have used personality variables to segment the markets, for example the landline telephone is ‘outdated’ and a commercial could appear to target elder people whereas the actual purpose is that the commercial is aimed at a much broader personality group. Thus this type of segmentation may be based on :
Personality characteristics : These can be useful for segmentation when a product resembles many competing products and consumers’ needs are not greatly affected by other segmentation variables. Marketers almost always select personality characteristics that many people view positively.
5. Behavioral segmentation
Behavioral segmentation is based on the customers’ attitude toward, use of, or response to a product/ dividing people and organization into groups according to how they behave with or act or response toward product offerings. Many marketers believe that the behavioral variables such as occasions, benefits, user status, usage rate, buyer-readiness stage, loyalty status and attitude are the best starting points for constructing market segments.
6. Multi-Variable Segmentation
Uses a number of different variables to develop a rich profile of a target group of customer i.e. defines a ‘portfolio’ of relevant segmentation variables. This is particularly possible with developments in data collection sustains developments in database creation and maintenance and accessible systems allow marketers to profile a purchasers trading cards allows stores to collect credible information about each individual shopper details of where (branches) usage rate, range of goods purchased and even brand choices are all available customer databases of Form
Titany answered the question on October 6, 2021 at 10:44