Market segmentation we can say dividing customers into different segment groups. It seems pretty simple from the top but the ground realities are very different. It is not as simple as it seems. Different customers have different needs and those set of needs sometime can make the marketing strategy of any company a complete failure.
By ignoring a simple variable in segmentation can lead a business to disastrous outcomes and shortfall in sales.
Lets take the example of a book store. This example will show how segmentation seems simple and become complex at the root level.
Junaid Saleem is a photographer and for his passion he has to travel a lot to different countries but he also loves to read books. In next month he is planing to go Egypt for some photography of Pyramids and other ancient civilization artifacts. He wants to buy some books which he wants to read in free time and during traveling.
Taimor Zahid is a very bright student, always staying ahead in studies and inspiring others by his analytical skills and passion for economics. He is doing Masters in Economics from LUMS. His quarter is started and he is in a need of some books regarding Industrial Economics to solve the case studies given by instructor.
The above two scenarios seems very simple and easy to understand there are certain complexities into the both two cases.
Junaid and Taimor both want to purchase books, they got the same product demand in generic terms, both have money to buy books and they both live in Wapda Town Lahore.
The complexity arises here. Junaid Saleem is photographer , he got plenty of time to search for books, visit different book stores around the city, browse different websites even amazon.com and can wait for some time. Along with that he wants to read book neither of any specific author nor any topic. He needs assistant and support to purchase books. He also needs references from friends regarding specific authors, publishers and reviews.
Taimoor Zahid is a university student. Although he too wants to buy books but he got certain constraints. He don’t have much time as its quarter is already started, he needs convenience and want to buy book from its Uni’s Book shop. He can’t deviate from industrial economics and don’t need assistance, reviews because he wants to buy only those books referred by his instructor.
Now just examine the both cases, their generic demand is same as they want to buy books but the certain constraints and limitations divide them into different segments.
What i am trying to explain is segmentation is not limited to four variables which we were used to read in books. Like Geographic, Demographic, Psycho-graphic or Behavioral. There are many many other factors involve which are minute in nature but have much greater impact like ” TIME ” ” ASSISTANCE ” & ” SOCIAL BINDINGS ” to defining the profile of a customer.
Setting up a book store seems easy task but segmenting the market is not easy because we all are having limited resource and it impossible to target all the target segments at a time.
FURQAN HASSAN BAJWA
