Shifts in Segmentation Strategy

Demographic segmentation can be defined as dividing the consumer market based on demographic variables such as age, gender, socio-economic status, and even race. Presumably because of its ease of identification demographic segmentation appears to be one of the most commonly used segmentation techniques.

The question I raise is whether or not demographic segmentation is still viable or has it become too "predictable" or over used? If this is the case, what is the next big thing, and how do marketers plan to identify different consumer groups?

My reason for this question is not so much because I believe that demographic segmentation does not work, but evolves more so because based on business cases etc. I feel that many marketers get caught by the demographic trap. Marketers seem to fall back on demographics too readily and perhaps end up losing potential sales based on some very blanketed assumptions (age, race, gender).

So what are the other options? 

Perhaps a shift to something new will enable marketers to under-segment less with such broad and generalized demographic segments. Some new theories align closer to Ted Levitt's concept of marketing myopia and how its not about product pushing, but instead emphasizing the importance of understanding the problem the consumer is trying to fix. One HBR blog suggests a new (3) step approach to marketing which I found interesting.

http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/06/a-new-framework-for-customer-s/

The general premise of this new approach is the customer is mapped to different "jobs" and then data is used to separate the consumers into various groups. As information becomes more readily available and the amount of "Big Data" continues to grow companies will have access to more information, but also have to spend more time deciphering what the data means. With all this data I'm sure many new data segmentation strategies will emerge. 

Why Some Brands Last Forever

Are the products superior with differentiation strategies that stand the test of time?

Are customers super loyal?

Do we as consumers fail to realize the benefit of other options?

There are a million questions as to why some brands are built to last "forever" and why others simply flop. Class discussion today continued to explore benefits associated with segmentation. Part of the discussion evolved into the importance of brands. With all of the choice available to customers today strong branding is essential. But seriously... why are some brands successful and others are just not?

Let's look at a simple example of table salt. In all reality most of us could agree that salt is salt no matter what brand it is. I'm not implying that table salt and sea salt are the same (because trust me they most definitely are not), but salt- just regular, plain, shake it out on your french fry salt is the same. Yet, most of us have a brand preference or are more familiar with certain salt brands over others why?

It is interesting to think about. Why is it that Morton salt is so iconic? Why have car brands like Volvo and BMW been around for so long? If we all knew the answer to that "secret" there would probably be a lot more power brands in the world.

I think that a lot of branding success comes down to strong segmentation from the start. A lot of these brands have clearly evolved from their start to where they currently are now, but I think it is important to note that many power brands understood their customer from the beginning.