Page 250 - Marketing Management

IDENTIFYING MARKET SEGMENTS AND TARGETS | CHAPTER 8 227

The four groups with lower resources are:
1. Believers—Conservative, conventional, and traditional people with concrete beliefs. They pre-
fer familiar, U.S.-made products and are loyal to established brands.
2. Strivers—Trendy and fun-loving people who are resource-constrained. They favor stylish
products that emulate the purchases of those with greater material wealth.
3. Makers—Practical, down-to-earth, self-sufficient people who like to work with their hands.
They seek U.S.-made products with a practical or functional purpose.
4. Survivors—Elderly, passive people concerned about change and loyal to their favorite brands.
Marketers can apply their understanding of VALS segments to marketing planning. For example,
Transport Canada, the agency that operates major Canadian airports, found that Actualizers, who
desire to express independence and taste, made up a disproportionate percentage of air travelers.
Given that segment’s profile, stores such as Sharper Image and Nature Company were expected to
do well in the firm’s airports.
Psychographic segmentation schemes are often customized by culture. The Japanese version of
VALS, Japan VALS™, divides society into 10 consumer segments on the basis of two key concepts:
life orientation (traditional ways, occupations, innovation, and self-expression) and attitudes to
social change (sustaining, pragmatic, adapting, and innovating).

Behavioral Segmentation

In behavioral segmentation, marketers divide buyers into groups on the basis of their knowledge
of, attitude toward, use of, or response to a product.

NEEDS AND BENEFITS Not everyone who buys a product has the same needs or wants the
same benefits from it. Needs-based or benefit-based segmentation is a widely used approach because
it identifies distinct market segments with clear marketing implications. Constellation Brands
identified six different benefit segments in the U.S. premium wine market ($5.50 a bottle and up). 50
• Enthusiast (12 percent of the market). Skewing female, their average income is about $76,000
a year. About 3 percent are “luxury enthusiasts” who skew more male with a higher income.
• Image Seekers (20 percent). The only segment that skews male, with an average age of 35.
They use wine basically as a badge to say who they are, and they’re willing to pay more to make
sure they’re getting the right bottle.
• Savvy Shoppers (15 percent). They love to shop and believe they don’t have to spend a lot to
get a good bottle of wine. Happy to use the bargain bin.
• Traditionalist (16 percent). With very traditional values, they like to buy brands they’ve heard
of and from wineries that have been around a long time. Their average age is 50 and they are
68 percent female.
• Satisfied Sippers (14 percent). Not knowing much about wine, they tend to buy the same
brands. About half of what they drink is white zinfandel. Constellation Brands has adopted
• Overwhelmed (23 percent). A potentially attractive target market, they find purchasing wine a needs-based market segmentation
confusing. plan to sell its premium wines.

DECISION ROLES It’s easy to identify the buyer for many
products. In the United States, men normally choose their shaving
equipment and women choose their pantyhose; but even here
marketers must be careful in making targeting decisions, because
buying roles change. When ICI, the giant British chemical
company, discovered that women made 60 percent of decisions on
the brand of household paint, it decided to advertise its Dulux
brand to women.
People play five roles in a buying decision: Initiator, Influencer,
Decider, Buyer, and User. For example, assume a wife initiates a
purchase by requesting a new treadmill for her birthday. The hus-
band may then seek information from many sources, including his
best friend who has a treadmill and is a key influencer in what
models to consider. After presenting the alternative choices to his
wife, he purchases her preferred model, which ends up being used