Student Corner - 260

SEGMENTATION  (GEOGRAPHIC)

We have seen the significance of segmentation as a business strategy and the kinds of segmentation that makes marketing efficient and effective in the sense it does not encourage to use resources in ways that are not profitable to the company. Capital cannot be treated lightly when framing budget for the financial year. Budget must reflect the efficient understanding of the marketing dynamics.  We saw segmentation tends to exploit your resources where they bring productive results, that is, your customer stay with you and new customer joins you.

In addition to the kinds of segmentation we have looked into, we will consider some more kinds of segmentation that generally business houses engage themselves with. Experts discuss generally four types of segmentation: geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioral.

Let us briefly look into each kind of segmentation for the sake of clarity in understanding. But one word of caution. These four kinds do not exhaust the possibilities of some more kinds of segmentation the future might pose before you.  After all, it is the experience of the customer that is his sense of satisfaction that matters. And the experience is one of the unpredictable facts of life. Friends turn foes; wives who have lived with somebody very happily suddenly find themselves considering divorce; the ranks of the wealthiest in the world keeps changing; in every field of living, we find unexpected events surprise us. That is, these four kinds of segmentation are for our convenient approach to the problem. An openness of mind will face any number of challenges without the fear of failure, a human characteristic which is too deep to be understood and accepted easily. Now, let us turn to the four kinds of segmentation.

First one we mentioned geographic segmentation. We know that every customer without exception is born somewhere at some time. And this event of birth decides so many factors for him or her; we have seen and heard about different cultures like Western culture and Eastern culture, to mention just the major cultures talked about. Culture again is a very big subject like commerce itself and both interact with each other. From the bullock-cart to Boeing, everything defines culture. Let us not go into the nuances of culture at present the context being commercial overtone.

The birth happens in a county; in that country, it happens in a region; and the region has a state and in the state you are born in some area. The people of the country have their own specific needs besides some common needs.  The needs of a state often differ from those of a country and even of a specific area. Now you know the components that fall under the geographic segment.

We will see other kinds in our next.  Just for the sake of knowing them and trying to use them where and when it is possible.