How would targeting customers look like without segmentation? Much similar to finding a lost bottle in a large ocean, right! When the entire heterogeneous market is broken down into subsets of homogeneous segments, it’s known as Market Segmentation. This segmentation makes it simpler for the marketers to focus on the categorized customers and to work according to their tastes and preferences.
Companies determine segments based on several factors such as demographic factors, psychographic factors, geographic factors, product features & competitors, and behaviour of a customer towards a product. Let’s discuss the parameters chosen by a company while segmenting the market based on consumer behaviour.
1. Customer Needs:
Under this parameter, a company analyzes the motive of the customers to consume a product or service and addresses them accordingly. A single product can offer several types of benefits to various categories of customers. For example, paints can be used for decorations, moisture protection, rust protection, etc. Companies selling paint usual create product segments such as “decorative” i.e., paint used for craft works; “industrial” i.e., used with machines for painting vehicles, metal furniture, etc. This categorization helps the companies segment the users based on their needs relevant to that product.
2. Consumer Behaviour:
This parameter segments the users based on their product consumption pattern. For example, in a consumer market, products like baby foods are put in the category of “Daily Consumption” because it is purchased frequently but of course it’s not directly consumed by the purchaser. Similarly, life-saving medicines are put in the category of “Rare Consumption” as they are purchased only in case of medical emergencies.
3. Purchase Behaviour:
Under this segment, the users are segmented based on their purchasing pattern based on time and frequency of purchases. Customer segments based on the purchasing behaviour of the customers can include one-time users, first-time users, potential users, repeat users, brand loyalty users, and so on.
4. Communication Behaviour:
Based on communication behaviour, users are segmented based on the extent of communication regarding the product before, during, and after purchasing it. Here, the opinion leaders play a vital role because they have knowledge about or are regular users of certain products, and they are vocal about their opinions. Hence, they command attention of various potential users. It is important for the companies to focus on the message these opinion leaders communicate.
5. Consumer Purchasing Roles:
Under this segment, companies try to analyze what role is being played by the customer in the purchasing process whether the buyer is an initiator, influencer, decider, or end user. Generally, companies target the “influencers”. For example, the marketers of a toy brand target children because they act as initiators, influencers and users when it comes to toys rather than targeting parents or grandparents who are the deciders and buyers of the product.
Thus, behavioural segmentation is a tool that categorizes customers based on their attitude towards a product, considering their lifestyle and patterns of buying or consuming the product. This segmentation is used both in the consumer as well as business markets.
