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Consumer types, personas & market segments

 

Market segmentation is used to divide a market into subgroups. It’s useful to divide the market according to products and product characteristics, but also according to certain consumer types. Segmentation by product often also includes segmentation by price group, so that a company can specifically adapt its products to demand behavior in terms of quality, appeal and price.

 

The aim is to divide an overall market into internally homogeneous and mutually heterogeneous subgroups (market segments), thus enabling differentiated or optimized market cultivation in product development, marketing and sales.

 

We recommend segmentations in the form of buyer typologies using the level of agreement on personality-describing characteristics and on demographic criteria such as age, gender, income, social status. Buyers in a product field (e.g., beer drinkers) are asked about their purchasing attitudes toward various beer brands. In addition, the respondents have to scale certain personality traits, depending on their applicability, e.g.:

  • self-image (self-acceptance, personality drives, life experiences, character, values, ideals, desires, possibly self-criticism)
  • lifestyle (activities, interests, attitudes towards consumption, leisure, optimism/pessimism etc)
  • attitudes towards product groups (e.g. eco-products)
  • behavior (consumption, reading behavior, opinion leaders also for certain product groups such as cosmetics, fashion)

Personality traits and typologies

The personality traits are given to the respondents in the form of statements, such as “I tend to be sober and matter-of-fact”, “when shopping, I pay particular attention to quality”, “I only buy what I need”.

 

The statement batteries can then be compressed into specific attitude types using a factor analysis (e.g., thriftiness, enjoyment of experience, willingness to innovate). The advantage here is the restriction to a few important type dimensions instead of the many given statements.

A cluster analysis is then used to identify specific target group segments (e.g. “the undemanding female shopper,” “the trend-oriented,” “the young family,” “the down-to-earth”) and depicted in a multidimensional space using an MDS (multidimensional scaling). With the help of the collected images and purchasing attitudes for various brands (see image analysis), the individual types can be described in terms of their affinity for specific brands (people with similar brand affinities, for example, make up a target group cluster).

 

These typologies, specifically geared to certain markets, provide a clear basis for target group analysis, enabling different target group segments to be addressed for product selection, pricing policy and communication strategy.

Conclusion

Segmentation allows target groups to be accurately identified, quantified and characterized. The analysis enables effective targeting and appropriate communication.

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