Select a market of interest and list different ways of segmenting demand in that market. Which of them can be considered objective, enabling them to be researched and quantified? Is subjective segmentation of no strategic worth?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

There is nothing wrong in principle with subjective segmentation, indeed it can result from highly
creative insights. Unfortunately, such segments may be impossible to identify or quantify practically.
For example, so-called ‘pippies’, meaning people inheriting parents’ property, could be an attractive
concept for marketers, implying newly acquired wealth and spending power. But who are they? How
old? What purchase behaviours characterise them? A moment’s thought suggests people in this
category may have relatively little in common and are impossible to communicate with as a defined
segment. Subjectivity can work when proposed segments draw on imaginative categorization that
turns out to be grounded in observable behaviours. Thus, ‘Blackberry’ smartphones were initially
marketed as a functional tool for business people because of its keyboard and real-time email
facility. This market appears to have been overtaken by teenage former ‘texters’ with sore thumbs
and plenty to say!