Market Segmentation: How to Do It and How to Profit from It, Revised and updated 4th Edition

Chapter 6

Developing a representative sample of different decision-makers

Summary

For the vast majority of markets it simply is not feasible, or even necessary, to include all the decision-makers who are now the focus of your segmentation project. The concluding segments are therefore derived from a sample of decision-makers who, between them, represent the specified market as a whole.

This step is the very heart of the segmentation process and requires careful thought.

This chapter provides the guidelines you require in order to develop a representative sample of different decision-makers when conducting a segmentation project using internal resources. In building your model of the specified market, this, the third step in the segmentation process, as illustrated in Figure 6.1, identifies the characteristics and properties of a purchase on which decisions are made along with the customer attributes that will be used to describe the decision-makers. It is the very heart of thesegmentation process and, as such, requires you to give it careful thought.

Figure 6.1 The segmentation process – Step 3

Note: ‘What’ refers to all aspects of a purchase and therefore includes ‘where’ products are bought, ‘when’ they are bought and ‘how’ they are bought in addition to what the actual product or service itself is, consists of, or is made from.

For projects which include current decision-makers ...