Demographic and behavioural segmentation

Demographics refer to statistics that describe a population in terms of personal characteristics such as age (age group or age bracket), gender or sex (male or female), income (how much money a person earns, how affluent or rich they are), marital status, ethnic background, religion, life cycle (single, married, with children), education, and occupation. In demographic segmentation customers are divided up on the bases of occupation and social class: middle class, working class, etc. Here is one of such demographic customer classifications of the UK:

· Professionals – senior business executives and civil servants

· People with very responsible jobs – middle managers, heads of local government departments, etc.

· People doing non-manual jobs – technicians, nurses, etc.

· Skilled manual workers

· Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers

· People with the lowest income levels – pensioners

Marketers use the ABC socio-economic categories to target groups. In the UK this is known as ACORN, which stands for A Classification Of Residential Neighbourhoods. This system assumes that people from a particular area will have a similar social background. It can be used to predict purchases of everything from cat food to financial products.

ABs are prized customer segment, as they have a high disposable income and strong economic power – that is, they have money to spend. Housewives who stay at home and look after the family ate often the main shoppers for a household and are frequently targeted by marketers for certain types of products. Marketing messages that appeal to singles (unmarried people) will not be the same as the messages that appeal to the specific tastes of people married with kids. City dwellers, also known as urbanites – people who live in a city or a large conurbation or metropolis – will have different preferences from country dwellers. Commuters travel to their place of work from the country or suburbs and can be targeted on public transport or on out-of-home advertising along roadsides.

Customers can also be divided up by behavioural segmentation. It means why, when and how they buy a particular product, their knowledge of, their attitude towards it, use of or response to a product, price sensitivity, brand loyalty, benefits sought, etc. Identifying people who eat popcorn at the cinema is an example of behavioural segmentation based on situation of use.

Customer groups: lifestyle segmentation

People from a particular social class may spend their money in particular ways. But it can be more useful to look at people’s lifestyles, the overall patterns of how they live, what they buy, etc. Consumer lifestyles include how people spend their time and money. Here, values, opinions, activities and interests are important.

· Achiever – this person has worked hard and got what he or she wanted.

· Belonger – this person has a traditional outlook. He or she likes to feel comfortable but does not like change.

· Decision maker – this person announces that something is going to happen.

· Dependent – this person is unable to survive well alone because of age, lack of money or a physical or mental disability.

· Emulator – this person is young and fit. He or she is ambitious, determined to win in life.

· Influencer – this person tells other people about an innovation they think is a good one.

· Initiator – this person has the original idea to do something.

· Integrated – this person is content with his life, neither over-ambitious nor locked in the past.

Date: 2015-01-12; view: 1312