Each year, an average of 30,000 new products enter the marketplace (that’s enough to fill the average grocery store!), and 70% will fail to sustain or grow sales in the first two years. 

How does a brand ensure that a new product stands out in the sea of competition? How does it increase the odds of success? 

The key is to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach and instead get the correct product in front of the right customers at the proper time.

To achieve this level of specificity, brands must use proper market segmentation. This practice allows a company to focus its product development and marketing efforts narrowly.

What is market segmentation?

At its most basic, market segmenting is breaking a broad swath of potential customers into smaller customer groups with similar characteristics. A company can then design products and marketing campaigns tailored to the needs and interests of a particular target market.

Few companies have the resources to sell to a mass market. Most must focus their efforts to meet more limited budget constraints. 

Market segmentation identifies the many different reasons people purchase products to help companies make smaller investments with more significant returns.

The more that a brand can narrow the audience for a new product, the more likely it can successfully sell to them. Rather than trying to persuade a generic customer base to buy a product they may or may not want, you can place the product in front of people who need it.

Benefits of market segmentation

Market segmentation provides valuable customer insights that can be used to create many positive business outcomes. 

●     Product development: By identifying narrow market segments and researching their specific needs, brands can create products that satisfy those exact pain points. These specialized offers will have little to no competition.

●     Business growth: The more a company understands various market segments, the more it can expand by moving into new geographic areas, offering complementary products to existing customers, or creating new products to appeal to a previously uninterested audience.

●     Optimized marketing: Using the insights from segmentation research, marketing teams can create highly targeted messages on the most relevant platforms. Even 

better, they can make calculated decisions about media spend to reduce costs.

●     Better distribution strategies: Knowing where and when your customers shop can help you change or tweak your distribution strategies to streamline and save money while improving customer satisfaction.

●     Customer retention: Done well, market segmentation can create brand loyalty. When you’re able to anticipate and address a customer’s needs at every turn, they are far more likely to become repeat buyers and brand advocates. 

A company that takes the time and energy to cultivate a deep understanding of its customers is almost guaranteed to have a competitive advantage. It’s far more likely to expand its market share and profits.

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Types of market segmentation

There are four main types of market segmentation, each of which offers a different method for identifying clear attributes unique to a particular group of customers.

Geographic segmentation

It can be helpful to group customers by a specific area—from a country down to a neighbourhood. 

This approach is particularly effective for products and services that address localized concerns. This may include items affected by the weather (lawn care, clothing) or regional preferences (cuisine, sports, or other recreational activities).

To use geographic segmentation, break down potential customers by identifying characteristics such as state, county, zip code, climate, primary language, or population density. 

Demographic segmentation

It’s helpful to group customers by quantifiable factors like age, income level, family size, religion, race, nationality, language, educational level, marital status, occupation, home ownership, political party affiliation, or income.

Demographic information is generally easy and affordable to access, which makes this type of segmentation one of the simplest to use. 

A product may use demographic segmentation to position itself as the best solution for a specific type of person (for example, married men, 30 to 40 years old, who have a full-time job earning $100,000 or more and own a home).

Demographic segmentation may not be detailed enough to create distinct product differentiation. That’s why it’s often combined with another type of segmentation to narrow the customer group further.

Psychographic segmentation

One of the most detailed forms of market segmentation divides customers based on qualitative traits. These details can’t be easily measured like demographics and include things like values, habits, attitudes or opinions, personality, lifestyle or social status, and hobbies or activities.

Gathering psychographic information requires more effort and can be achieved using surveys, focus groups, interviews, and social media monitoring.

Once you’ve identified shared psychographics for a particular market segment, turn it into a statement. For example, “we help busy moms who want to serve their young children a home-cooked meal in 30 minutes or less.” Then, ask your target audience whether the statement resonates with them.

Very often, marketers like to combine psychographic segmentation with demographic segmentation to create very distinct customer groups.

Behavioural segmentation

Finally, another popular method of market segmentation is based on customer behaviour during the buying journey. 

Behavioural segmentation considers actions like when shoppers become customers (acquisition), how customers use the product or service (user journey), how frequently they use it (engagement), how long they continue to use it (retention), and how often they make new purchases (loyalty).

This method can be complicated to execute but is likely to generate beneficial insights. It’s often the best way to identify opportunities for new products or markets and for improving existing offerings.

How to validate a segment

To be worthwhile, a segment must be clearly defined and unique. To test whether your potential market segment makes the grade, ask yourself these questions:

  1. What does this segment value most about a product like ours?
  2. What is the number one reason this segment chooses to buy a product like ours?
  3. What is the buying journey for this segment (what content, platform, features are crucial)?

The answers to these questions must be based on data from actual research, not just your intuition or anecdotal experiences. 

If you can easily and with great detail answer each of these questions, then your segment has great potential to be actionable and profitable.

If you don’t have clear answers, however, then you likely need to do more research or further refine the segment.

How to segment the market for a new product

The market segmentation process isn’t complicated. There are two major components—creating segments and executing a go-to-market plan—and a few significant considerations at each stage:

Customer Segments

  1. Set an objective for what you hope to achieve through market segmentation (create a new product, better serve existing clients, find more profitable customers, etc.).
  2. Identify which segmentation type or combination of types you’ll use, and assess the viability of your proposed market (Is it too large? Is it large enough?)
  3. Conduct research by collecting hard data and anecdotal evidence related to your preferred segment. Avoid rushing this stage because it is the most crucial component of quality segmentation. 
  4. Compile your research and use it to determine which new products or marketing approaches you’ll use to target this segment. 
  5. Validate the offer or messaging with a representative sample of the segment using surveys, focus groups, and polls.

Go-To-Market Plan

  1. Develop a launch plan using marketing and sales strategies relevant to the target segment. 
  2. Test the effectiveness of your strategy by implementing conversion tracking early.
  3. Continue to execute the plan and monitor the results over time, adjusting as necessary.

To ensure the best results, companies may want to invest in marketing software. Many products will automatically segment customers into relevant groups, analyze the segments using interactive charts, and provide third-party data to improve results.

Market segmentation best practices

As you execute a market segmentation plan, watch out for these common mistakes that can negatively affect your results:

●     Unaligned segments: The markets you target must harmonize with your company’s strategy and structure, rather than trying to conform your brand and offer to suit the segment.

●     Segments that are too broad: Failing to make the segment narrow enough will allow the competition to gain an advantage by targeting a more clearly defined and like-minded portion of your segment.

●     Segments that are too narrow: Focusing on too small of a segment will significantly limit the return on investment of your time and money.

●     Too many segments: It’s tempting to pursue all of the potentially profitable segments you identify, but this can dilute resources and negatively affect revenues.

●     Targeting people, not money: A perfectly aligned and well-sized segment is useless if its members don’t possess sufficient buying power. Focus on market segments that will create a positive ROI, even if they aren’t the largest or most glamorous.

●     Never updating segments: People change, and those changes can come quickly in today’s global, tech-savvy world. Frequently revisit your segments and adjust as needed to remain relevant and competitive.

Market segmentation is a highly effective strategy, and it isn’t complicated. It can be time-consuming, however, and may be challenging if it’s a new approach for you and your marketing team. Expect mistakes as you execute this new approach.

Stick with it, though, because segmentation is an incredibly valuable process that shows customers that you genuinely understand them. Providing tailored products and messages that resonate with your customers’ specific needs will help your brand grow exponentially.

Market research is a critical foundation for any company expanding beyond its domestic operations. While research is valuable at every stage of a business lifecycle, it becomes indispensable when entering unfamiliar international markets. The risks are greater, the variables more complex, and the assumptions that hold true at home often fall apart abroad.

Understanding the needs of international marketing starts with recognising that success abroad demands more than simply replicating domestic strategies. It requires deep, localised insight—into consumer behaviours, cultural context, infrastructure, regulations, and the competitive landscape. International market research provides this insight, equipping businesses with the data and foresight necessary to reduce risk, allocate resources strategically, and compete with incumbents.

What Is International Market Research?

International market research refers to the process of gathering, analysing, and interpreting information about a foreign market before entry or expansion. Unlike domestic research, it involves working across languages, legal systems, cultural values, and operational realities that may be unfamiliar or unpredictable.

At its core, this research aims to answer several fundamental questions: Who are the customers? What do they need? Who else is meeting that need? What regulations will shape entry? And how do economic, social, and political conditions affect market potential?

While the research techniques—such as surveys, interviews, and competitive audits—are often similar to domestic research, they must be adapted to suit the norms, expectations, and infrastructure of the target market.

Why Domestic Research Alone Falls Short

The distinction between international and domestic research isn’t just about geography. It’s about context. Companies often underestimate the degree to which consumer behaviour is shaped by local culture, infrastructure, history, and regulation.

For example, qualitative research methods like focus groups may perform well in the United States or UK but prove ineffective or even counterproductive in countries where group participation is limited by cultural norms or trust issues. Online surveys may have broad reach in developed markets but suffer low response rates or access limitations in developing economies with poor internet penetration.

Assuming that domestic insights can be directly transferred into new international markets leads to misalignment, miscommunication, and costly mistakes.

Eight Reasons Why International Market Research Is Essential

1. Cultural Context Shapes Consumer Response

Cultural missteps are one of the most common reasons market entries fail. Norms around communication, packaging, imagery, and even colour can vary significantly across borders. What feels aspirational in one culture may appear aggressive or inappropriate in another.

Consider Gerber’s failed entry into several African markets. The brand’s standard baby food packaging featured a smiling infant on the jar. In markets where labels typically depict the product inside, consumers assumed the jars contained baby meat. Without research into local packaging norms, Gerber misread its audience and suffered reputational damage.

Even subtle cultural signals—like the tone of advertising, the role of gender in decision-making, or the expected pace of customer service—can dramatically influence perception. Research allows brands to calibrate messaging, design, and experience in ways that resonate.

2. Regulatory Environments Are Market-Defining

Every market has its own legal framework. This includes data privacy, advertising laws, product standards, hiring regulations, and consumer protection policies. Failing to understand these nuances can stall launches, trigger penalties, or lead to costly compliance overhauls after launch.

Market research helps identify not just what is legal, but what is common practice. For instance, a telemarketing strategy might technically comply with regulations but still be viewed as intrusive or culturally insensitive in certain markets. Likewise, compliance with GDPR in Europe requires a different data management approach than marketing to consumers in Japan or Indonesia.

3. Preferences Aren’t Universal

Consumer preferences don’t always follow logic. They follow context. Taste, aesthetics, pricing sensitivity, and usage behaviour are all deeply shaped by regional expectations.

Home Depot’s failed expansion in China is a case in point. The brand assumed the do-it-yourself (DIY) model would translate easily. But most Chinese middle-class consumers live in high-rise apartments and prefer hiring professionals over undertaking home renovations themselves. The model that made Home Depot successful in the U.S. was culturally misaligned in China.

Market research helps uncover these critical nuances before strategic decisions are locked in.

4. Understanding the Competition Requires Ground-Level Insight

Competitive landscapes in foreign markets may appear similar on paper but behave differently in practice. Local brands may have decades of relationship capital, unique pricing models, or distribution arrangements that aren’t visible through desktop research.

Studying these players helps foreign entrants avoid head-on competition where they are unlikely to win. Instead, research allows companies to identify underserved niches, behavioural gaps, or brand positioning opportunities that incumbents have missed.

5. Risk Mitigation Requires Local Knowledge

Entering any new market carries risk. But international markets add complexity in the form of currency volatility, political instability, unfamiliar tax codes, supply chain friction, and talent shortages. These risks cannot be fully understood from afar.

International research helps companies anticipate issues before they escalate. It equips leadership teams with the foresight to scenario-plan, buffer budgets, or pivot entry strategies in response to external shocks. Research can’t eliminate risk, but it makes risk measurable and manageable.

6. Logistics and Infrastructure Vary Widely

Domestic logistics solutions rarely translate directly into foreign markets. Everything from warehousing and payment systems to transportation and fulfilment may need to be rethought.

In countries with limited last-mile delivery networks, e-commerce models must adapt. In regions where mobile wallets are more trusted than credit cards, payment systems must localise. International research helps uncover these frictions in advance, allowing for appropriate operational planning.

7. Strategy and Budget Planning Require Evidence

Entering a new market without solid data is a gamble. Research provides the financial benchmarks, demand forecasts, and competitive intelligence necessary to build realistic market entry strategies. It allows decision-makers to prioritise regions, allocate budgets, and measure viability before investing substantial resources.

In many organisations, well-founded research also plays a key role in securing internal buy-in. When marketing and product teams can clearly show why a region is attractive, how consumer demand is evolving, and what conditions favour entry, it becomes easier to justify budget and resource allocation.

8. Marketing Channels Must Be Context-Specific

A campaign that performs well domestically may fall flat abroad. Marketing channels are shaped by local media habits, platform penetration, language nuance, and consumer trust.

For instance, while Facebook advertising may deliver results in the U.S. or Philippines, WeChat, KakaoTalk, or Line may be far more influential in East Asian markets. In rural markets with low connectivity, offline channels like radio or SMS may still dominate. International market research surfaces these realities so campaigns can be designed for relevance, not just reach.

How International Market Research Differs from Domestic Research

The core methods of market research may be consistent, but their execution and interpretation change significantly across borders. International market research must account for:

  • Cultural fluency: Understanding not just what consumers say, but what they mean within cultural context
  • Legal variance: Navigating country-specific compliance and ethical boundaries
  • Operational constraints: Adapting research methods to infrastructure realities (e.g. mobile surveys in mobile-first markets)
  • Linguistic nuance: Translating more than just language—capturing idioms, tone, and intent

Success in international markets doesn’t come from applying domestic strategies at scale. It comes from rethinking assumptions and rebuilding strategy on local insight.

Closing Insight: Insight Is a Strategic Asset

In the global economy, assumptions are expensive. The first step of the research process is essential because it reveals the unknowns that domestic success often obscures. It’s not simply about avoiding failure. It’s about seeing what others miss.

Organisations that treat international market research as a strategic discipline—rather than a compliance formality or launch checklist—position themselves to grow with confidence. They enter new markets not as outsiders, but as informed players who respect local complexity and act accordingly.

To succeed globally, companies must begin locally. That begins with asking the right questions, in the right places, and listening closely to the answers that emerge.

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Expanding into a foreign market requires more than translating your existing strategy. It demands local insight, and that starts with selecting the right international market research methods. Understanding what consumers want, how they behave, and what barriers exist—from cultural nuance to infrastructure—is what separates successful entries from expensive missteps.

The quality of your research is directly tied to your market outcome. Poorly chosen methods can lead to costly misjudgements, particularly when entering unfamiliar international markets where assumptions rarely hold.

Every challenge of domestic expansion—from compliance to messaging—is intensified when moving into a foreign market. Without local research, you risk launching into an unfamiliar environment blind to the cultural, legal, and logistical realities that shape consumer behaviour.

The following methods represent some of the most effective approaches for conducting international market research. Each has strengths and limitations depending on the market context, infrastructure, and cultural norms.

Understanding Data Types in International Market Research

Before selecting the appropriate methodology, it’s critical to understand the types of data international market researchers typically rely on: secondary data, survey data, and experimental data. Each plays a distinct role in shaping insight, and their relevance often shifts depending on the infrastructure, openness, and regulatory constraints of the target market.

Secondary data

Secondary data refers to information that has already been collected for other purposes—government publications, trade association reports, academic studies, and NGO findings. It offers a low-cost starting point, especially in regions with transparent regulatory or economic reporting.

However, researchers must be cautious. In some countries, government or institutional data may be outdated, politically influenced, or difficult to access. Language barriers and translation inaccuracies can also compromise the clarity of findings.

Survey data

Survey data includes any information collected directly from individuals within your target market. It encompasses methods such as online questionnaires, telephone interviews, in-person intercepts, and mobile surveys. Surveys are particularly useful in international research because they provide firsthand insight into consumer preferences, behaviours, and unmet needs.

Challenges emerge quickly across borders. Researchers must navigate dialects, idioms, translation accuracy, and cultural tendencies that influence how questions are interpreted or answered. Standardising instruments across geographies requires localisation, not just language conversion.

Experimental data

Experimental data is generated by testing variables in controlled environments. In international market research, this might involve A/B testing promotional offers, pricing strategies, or product messaging across different cultural or regional cohorts. This method lets companies observe actual behavioural responses, not just stated preferences.

Experimental approaches yield some of the most actionable findings, but they’re also among the most difficult to execute across international markets. Regulatory approval, ethical review processes, and operational complexity vary widely. Testing that seems routine in one country may face resistance or legal obstacles in another.

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9 Effective Methods for International Market Research

Selecting the right market research methods is one of the most important decisions you’ll make when entering a foreign market. Different regions demand different approaches. Infrastructure, cultural norms, technology access, and data availability vary widely, and each factor affects how you collect insight. Below are nine of the most effective methods used by researchers to navigate these complexities.

1. Overseas Business Research

Reviewing existing business research can provide a valuable foundation. Internal reports from companies operating in your target market—whether competitors or not—can reveal macro trends, industry dynamics, regulatory conditions, and consumer behaviours.

While business intelligence offers a useful snapshot, it’s not enough to rely on other firms’ findings. Each company enters the market with different priorities, resources, and audiences. Use these insights to sharpen your own hypothesis, but validate with original research tailored to your objectives.

2. Foreign Government Information

Government sources often publish extensive demographic, economic, and regulatory data. National statistics offices, trade ministries, and customs departments maintain datasets that help companies understand the makeup and potential of a given market.

These insights are especially important when navigating legal and compliance issues. Tariffs, import restrictions, tax obligations, and employment laws vary significantly—and change frequently. Reviewing official publications can help avoid costly surprises, but researchers should assess source credibility and update frequency.

3. NGO and Third-Sector Data

In emerging markets where government data may be sparse or outdated, NGOs often provide more current and granular insight. Their reports can be particularly valuable in areas such as public health, education, income distribution, infrastructure, and rural access.

International organisations like the World Bank, UNICEF, and regional development agencies often work with local partners to produce data that’s otherwise inaccessible. These sources are especially useful for companies entering underserved markets or aiming to understand social and environmental dynamics.

4. Face-to-face Interviews and Focus Groups

Direct interactions through in-person interviews and moderated focus groups remain one of the most powerful tools in international research. They offer context-rich feedback and reveal nuanced perceptions, priorities, and emotions that surveys may overlook.

However, these sessions require careful planning. Venue sourcing, translation services, recruitment, and local moderation can be complex—particularly in rural or low-trust environments. Some markets may view formal research processes with suspicion or deferential politeness, leading to skewed responses. Working with experienced local partners is often essential.

5. Attitude scales

Attitude scales such as the Likert scale allow researchers to measure intensity of opinion across cultures. They’re relatively easy to translate and can be applied across multiple channels, from in-person questionnaires to online surveys.

While useful, they must be interpreted with care. In some cultures, respondents avoid extreme ratings out of politeness or social harmony. In others, midpoint choices are overused to mask disagreement. Pre-testing and local adaptation are key to generating useful results.

6. Text message (SMS) survey

Text message surveys provide quick, low-cost access to mobile users. They’re ideal in countries where smartphone penetration is low but basic mobile phone usage is widespread.

However, SMS surveys offer limited depth and are constrained by character count. They’re not ideal for complex topics, and mobile reach varies significantly by country. For example, GSMA data from 2024 shows mobile penetration in Sub-Saharan Africa still lags behind other regions, reducing effectiveness in rural areas.

7. Online survey

Email-based or web-hosted surveys are among the most scalable research tools. They allow for broad distribution, rapid response, and easy localisation.

The challenge is digital access. Markets with limited broadband or low internet penetration cannot be reached effectively through online-only methods. Even where connectivity is high, survey fatigue and low engagement can affect data quality. Incentivisation and responsive design can improve participation.

8. Mobile web survey

Smartphone-based surveys have surged in popularity, especially in mobile-first economies. Apps and browser-based surveys can collect multimedia responses, geo-location data, and behavioural patterns in real time.

That said, access is uneven. Markets such as India, Brazil, and Indonesia show high smartphone usage, while others lag behind. Additionally, device type, operating system, and bandwidth speed all influence user experience. Designing mobile-first, low-bandwidth versions improves usability.

9. Remote Face-to-Face

Platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams have transformed the feasibility of conducting face-to-face interviews and group sessions internationally. These tools reduce costs, remove travel barriers, and allow researchers to moderate sessions from a central location.

However, the digital divide remains. Remote sessions often skew toward urban, affluent, and younger demographics with reliable internet. Where digital literacy is low, researchers should pair this method with offline approaches to ensure representative sampling.

The Next Step in Effective International Research

International market research is never one-size-fits-all. The methods you choose must match the realities of your target region—whether you’re navigating regulatory red tape, limited infrastructure, or cultural nuance. Getting it wrong can be expensive. Getting it right can set the stage for long-term success.

Kadence specialises in helping brands move beyond assumptions. With local teams in key markets across Asia, the US, and Europe, we bring grounded insight, real-world feasibility, and cultural fluency to your research process.

Get in touch to learn how we can support your next international launch with data-led precision and deep regional expertise.

Market segmentation — the process of breaking your market into segments according to factors like needs, past behavior and more — is essential if you want to gain a clear understanding of your customers and target them effectively.

Companies that use market segmentation successfully can access a whole range of benefits. Segmented marketing tends to perform significantly better, and many of the world’s most successful brands have rigorously segmented their markets for decades. 

However, market segmentation is also wrought with challenges. Depending on the scale, it can be a major operation that requires a large number of resources and work. In this article, we’ll look at 5 of the main challenges facing companies as they conduct market segmentation, and how to mitigate them.

Why market segmentation is so important

Market segmentation allows you to divide your market into smaller groups, which comes with a whole range of powerful benefits. Here are some of the main advantages:

It gives you greater focus. By segmenting your market, you can target the right groups with the right products. The alternative is taking a one-size-fits-all approach, targeting a vast range of different people with the same product and marketing message, which is far less likely to convert any given person.

With segmentation you can use a different strategy for each group, tailoring your approach so your customers get more choice and a higher chance of getting exactly what they want — or at least much closer to what they want as you can offer.

It can give your brand a stronger identity. Brands and products that try to appeal to everyone often satisfy nobody. Look at highly successful brands like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s — they know who they are appealing to, the needs they want to meet and they don’t try to pretend otherwise. Nobody is drinking a coke or eating a Big Mac to be healthy or lose weight, they do it for the taste and convenience.

These brands are able to forge a strong and memorable brand identity by focusing on specific segments of the market and specific needs: in this case, people who want a refreshing and tasty beverage on the go and people who want fast, convenient food. They’re not trying to appeal to healthy gym-goers or people looking for an expensive sit-down meal, so they’re able to focus their marketing and product range exclusively on their true target market. This allows them to build a clear and unmistakable brand.

It reveals opportunities for innovation. Segmenting your market can illuminate new areas for innovation that you may have missed otherwise. You’ll notice ideas for new products, tweaks you can make to existing lines, and new campaigns to create.

When you divide your market into smaller segments, you’ll notice that some groups have a demand for specific things. If you treat your entire market as one block, these distinctions can easily get lost in the noise.

More accurate and targeted marketing. When you segment your market, you can speak to your customers in each respective group more directly. This allows you to create marketing campaigns and use channels that are much more tailored to your audience.

For example, some customers might respond extremely well to TikTok content, whereas others may be completely missed by that. Segmenting your market helps you avoid wasting money by targeting the wrong people, so you can optimize your marketing budget and maximize results.


It can drive international expansion for your brand. Entering a new market is fraught with challenges. But segmentation can help you hone in when it comes to launching your brand in a new market to give you a better chance of success. Segmentation allows you to target consumers with precision. You can then tailor your approach to the specific customer groups in that country, rather than simply using the same strategies you used in a different place.

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The challenges of market segmentation

Market segmentation, while incredibly useful, can be challenging to conduct and implement.  Here are some of the main challenges you’ll likely encounter when segmenting your market, with our top tips on how to overcome them:

1. Cost

Segmentation is an investment. Splitting your market into groups means you’ll have to do some things, for instance, marketing campaigns, multiple times in different ways. This can work out to be more expensive than simply running one campaign aimed at a single market.

There isn’t really any way to avoid this challenge. The cost of market segmentation is always going to be an investment, but if done right, the extra revenue you will generate from targeting the segments that represent the best opportunities for your brand will more than pay for the initial investment.  

2. Understanding that people can belong to multiple segments 

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that each potential customer belongs solely in one  specific segment. However, this is an oversimplification. Imagine you’re selling a brand of wine. One of your segments might be wine connoisseurs who enjoy drinking at bars with friends.  Another segment might be those who drink to unwind at home.

One person could fall into both of these segments, depending on factors like the time of the week and their current social schedule. People are individuals, after all, and their habits and desires can change based on environment and mindset. 

Bear this in mind when you’re approaching a segmentation, particularly in FMCG, and consider segmenting based on occasions, asking people about different scenarios to ensure their diverse needs are represented. 

3. Keeping segments precise

Segmentation only works when segments are clearly defined and are distinct from one another. If your segments are too broad and vague, you’ll lose out on many of the benefits of market segmentation because you’re not able to tailor your approach precisely enough. 

To ensure your segments are narrow and clear enough, it helps to create detailed personas for each one. A persona is a fictional profile that encapsulates the core qualities of each segment, including their needs, behaviours and motivations, based on the initial research. The purpose of personas are to bring to life the segments and demonstrate how they differ from one another.

For example, if you’re selling a brand of bottled water, one of your personas might be “Healthy Harry” who buys water to drink during workouts or while doing sports events. His persona profile would contain a range of information from what motivates him and to what he’s looking for in a product. The more detail, the better — this helps you create precise and tailored segments.

 4. Selecting the right segments to focus on

It can be easy to overlook some potentially promising groups when segmenting your market.

For example, you might end up disproportionately targeting one segment that makes up a big section of the market, when another might be a more natural fit for your product.

Remember, the benefit of segmentation is that it can enable you to be incredibly precise and personalised in your approach. This means that even when targeting segments that make up smaller proportions of the market, you will still see significant returns. 

It’s important to take your time in this phase of the segmentation to ensure you identify the right market segments or you’ll risk missing out on some lucrative avenues for growth.

5. Embedding the segmentation in your organisation

When people try to anticipate the difficulties involved in running a segmentation, the research approach is often the first thing to come to mind. But the real challenge for many organisations is in embedding the segmentation. This is of crucial importance if the segmentation is to drive change and growth for the business.

A segmentation is only as powerful as its internal champions. Fail to get stakeholders on board in the beginning and you’ll have a tough job ahead of you getting people to harness the segmentation to inform strategic decisions and realise the resulting benefits. 

We recommend taking an active approach to stakeholder management, making this a crucial element of the study’s design. Start with stakeholder interviews to secure buy-in to the project, then keep these people involved throughout. Towards the end of the project, visual outputs can help bring segments to life and keep them front of mind when stakeholders are making decisions. Workshops can also be a useful tool for taking the segmentation and using this to inform your strategy. 

Market segmentation is a powerful tool for businesses. It allows you to improve your product range, tailor your marketing, and increase your chances of connecting with customers and growing your brand.

Although the process can be challenging, it’s well worth taking the time to anticipate the potential barriers and work around them. At Kadence, we help companies of all kinds with market segmentation, mitigating the challenges while boosting their chances of success. Contact us to find out more about how we can help you do the same.


Segmenting your market is incredibly important if you want to achieve success in any industry. It has many benefits, from improved marketing to making it easier to expand your offerings. FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) are no exception. In fact, there are many reasons why market segmentation for FMCG products is sometimes even more important in this industry than others. There are many steps you can take to ensure your segmentation efforts are as effective as possible for your FMCG business.

First, it’s important to understand why segmentation is so important, and what makes FMCG different from some other industries. Then, we’ll move onto some key best practices for FMCG market segmentation.

Why is market segmentation important?

Whatever industry you’re in, it’s almost always helpful to segment your market into different slices based on a range of factors like needs, values, behaviours or interests. This has a wide range of benefits, such as:

  • It helps you better target your audience. Instead of developing products for a broad range of people, you can hone in on a specific segment and create a product that addresses their pain points more effectively.
  • It allows you to market more accurately and reliably. As above, when your target audience for marketing is more precisely defined, you can create marketing materials that speak to your prospects more directly, helping you build more meaningful relationships, engage them more easily, and increase your sales.
  • It reduces risk and optimizes spending. When you (correctly) target a more specific group of people, you increase the chances of successfully converting them to customers. This allows you to use marketing budgets more wisely, focusing resources on people you know are in need of your product instead of taking a costly scattergun approach.

(Learn more about market segmentation in our ultimate guide to market segmentation)

Why is market segmentation important for FMCG products?

FMCG products can be defined as products that are sold quickly and at a relatively low cost. This bracket of goods includes things like snacks, toiletries, cosmetics, and over-the-counter drugs. 

This category has certain characteristics that make segmentation a critical initiative for any FMCG business and will influence the approach you take to your segmentation.

  • With FMCG goods, people’s needs and desires change — sometimes significantly — based on where they are and who they’re with. For example, someone eating out with friends might have very different preferences compared to when they’re eating at home after a long day of work. This means one person may fit into several segments depending on their environment. This kind of fluctuation doesn’t happen in the same way as many other product types, like cars or investment products. As such, an occasion-based segmentation is needed.
  • FMCG is a high-competition space. Just think of the enormous numbers of potato chip brands, or toilet paper options. All these brands are fighting for customers all the time, and to compete in this kind of environment you need a keen understanding of your market and how to target it.
Woman shopping for FMCG products at a supermarket
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Market segmentation for FMCG products — guiding principles on how to get it right

For FMCG businesses, market segmentation should use many of the best practices employed by other types of companies. Here are some ways to ensure you get the most out of market segmentation as an FMCG company.

Get the right people on board at the beginning

One of the biggest challenges when you’re running a segmentation in an FMCG organisation is getting buy-in to the process from the key stakeholders. A segmentation should drive decisions at every level of a business – from marketing to product development – so it’s important to get these people on board at the outset to optimise eventual adoption of the segments.

One way of doing this is to carry out stakeholder interviews with the key people in your organisation. This is important for several reasons:

  • It allows you to gather important knowledge that exists in the business to inform the segmentation itself 
  • It helps create buy-in. By having skin in the game at the beginning, you are able to excite people about the project and create evangelists who will be more likely to harness the research going forwards. 

Another useful tip is to consider a client side “champion” both for the duration of the research and the internal roll out. This should be combined with a client side “core team” with representatives from each of the departments that is planning on using the segmentation. 

Remember that a person’s needs can change based on their environment, which will have implications for the way you approach segmentation in this category.

As mentioned above, one of the unique attributes of the FMCG category is that consumers’ needs change based on the situation. This means that with FMCG products, people don’t necessarily fit into fixed, static segments. As such, a lot of the time, segmentation is done based on occasions.

If we think about the alc-bev category, people tend to consume very different drinks depending on the occasion. Somebody having a beer with dinner on a Wednesday night will be motivated by a very different need than he/she will be when hanging out at a nightclub on Saturday, where they might be drinking something entirely different. Putting this person in one segment would wash out the findings, rather than accentuating the two very different motivations present in these occasions.

For this reason, when doing market research to inform a segmentation, it’s important to be specific about the what and why of the choices people make at different times. Ask them about a range of different scenarios to ensure their diverse needs are represented.

This is important to keep in mind for FMCG products since our habits and tastes fluctuate so much, in a way that they don’t always do with other products.

Identify the segments with most potential for your business

The core element of a segmentation project is the development of the segmentation solution, dividing the market up into segments that you can target. In this stage of the research, it’s important to remember that even though one of your segments might be a relatively small percentage of the market, it could account for a large share of sales. This is a vital principle to bear in mind in any category, but for FMCG it’s incredibly important, given how competitive the market can be. Focusing on a niche segment, by targeting consumers’ needs closely, can be a recipe for success. 

Augment traditional segmentation techniques with (self) ethnographic research

Every segmentation involves quantitative research to group people into segments based on certain characteristics. This allows us to target groups with broadly similar attributes with the same types of product.

We always recommend combining this with qualitative research to get under the skin of your segments and to help you create detailed personas. This qualitative research can take many forms – from in-depth interviews to online research such as an online community.

For FMCG brands, we recommend considering ethnography at this stage. This gives you a unique and unmatched opportunity to really understand your segments— if you really want to get to know your Fitness Enthusiasts, for instance, you want to see them in the course of their daily life. What do they do after work? What does their house look like? What’s in their refrigerator?

Ethnography gives you a level of insight that you can’t quite access with surveys. Doing this in person is incredibly rich, but it can be logistically challenging (particularly during Covid) and costly so it isn’t always possible to take advantage of this method. That said, there are a range of self-ethnographic techniques you can use to gain this depth of insight through mobile research. Examples include asking people to create a food diary, complete videos or photo tasks in store to help you understand the purchase journey or interview friends or family members. 

The insights from self-ethnography can be incredibly rich, helping you to really deepen your understanding of your segments so you can develop products, services and campaigns that really meet their needs. 

Bring your segments to life 

Once you’ve created your segments, the next task is to bring them to life. There are a number of ways you can do this but the first step is to create personas. 

What is a persona? A persona is a fictional profile that encapsulates the core qualities of each segment, including their needs, behaviours and motivations. The purpose of a persona is to help others in the business understand each segment and how they differ from one another so they can better serve their needs. As such, they tend to be very visual so they can be easily remembered and placed at the forefront of decision making. 

Naming here is of vital importance. A memorable name can be really useful in helping stakeholders remember the defining characteristics of a segment so that they live on in the organisation.

Some personas can be as simple as a PowerPoint slide. But at Kadence, we like to take this further, developing a range of visual outputs that you can use to help everyone in the business understand your core targets – from the C suite to the factory floor. 

We’ve developed everything from interactive PDFs to infographics to bring different segments to life. Some techniques we’ve found particularly useful include: 

  • Video-based teaser campaigns prior to unveiling the different personas to build interest and engagement 
  • Posters to bring personas front and centre for employees in the office
  • Documentary-style films with consumers representing each segment. These can be a really effective way of bringing the segmentation to life and helping the key insights stick with stakeholders for a long time to come

(You can find out more about our design team and their capabilities).

Video interview in a person's home

Going global – how to approach international segmentations 

Most FMCG brands are global, but their products can and do vary depending on where they are sold. As such, marketers often ask us if they should have one global segmentation solution or individual solutions by region or country. 

The answer really lies in how you will use it.  If you have marketing teams that are deployed at a country level, then country level is the way to go, with, hopefully, a global framework that the countries all fall into that the global marketing team can use. 

If most of the marketing action is coming from a single global team, then one global segmentation is better so it really does depend on the set up of your organisation and team. 

Need help developing a market segmentation for FMCG products in your business?  

Market segmentation in the FMCG space is a powerful way to dig into your market, better understand your customers, create better products, and get buy-in from leadership for your plans.

It’s crucial to do this right. There are many challenges and potential pitfalls to navigate, but a huge potential upside in an industry where competition is fierce and customer expectations are high.

For best results, it helps to work with the experts. To find out how Kadence can help with market segmentation for FMCG, read more about our segmentation capabilities, our work in FMCG or get in touch with us today.

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Segmentations are powerful tools for any business. But right now, at a time where we’re seeing extremes of behaviour – from lockdowns in some markets to a roaring twenties style reopening in others, how should you be approaching your segmentation?

We’ve brought together segmentation experts from across Kadence to share their top tips. In this short 10 minute video, we cover:

  • How to know if you need to refresh your segmentation – (Hint – if you’re in an industry where behaviours have changed as a result of the pandemic, the answer is very likely to be a yes!)
  • When you should embark on your segmentation refresh
  • What you can do in the interim to ensure your segmentation delivers in the short-term
  • What to do if you need to develop a segmentation now

To understand more about the best approach to segmentation, take a look at our ultimate guide or get in touch.

Introducing market segmentation

There is no product or service which fits every consumer uniformly. Sometimes there needs to be variation in products to suit different people – compact smartphones for people with smaller hands, for example, or simplified apps for those not so good with tech. It could be different ways of selling a product – appealing to some people with an emotional message and others with a technical pitch.

Knowing the ways consumers behave, feel, think and make decisions can help any business tailor its products and its pitches to meet their needs more fully. By breaking down the market into segments – which share certain traits, are identifiably different from other groups, or have similar attitudes – we can find efficient and effective ways of targeting products and services.

Market segmentation is one of the most commonly used market research and analysis tools. When you call your mobile network provider, for example, you can be sure you’ve been categorised into a tailor-made customer segment, and that the interaction you have with the call centre is at least in part defined by the persona you’ve been assigned. It helps them understand how to talk to you, what behaviours you’re likely to exhibit, and the types of need you’ll have.

There are three reasons organisations typically commission a market segmentation project:

  1. They feel they don’t know enough about their customers.
  2. They have some basic ideas about the types of customers they have but they can’t apply that knowledge to meet their marketing needs.
  3. They have a successful segmentation analysis but they’re finding it’s flawed in some way and needs updating.

A segmentation doesn’t just shape the way businesses deal with target customers or existing clients, it informs the design of new products and services and will dictate how they decide to reach you and with what messages. It can shape marketing campaigns and entire brand strategies.

What is market segmentation?

Once upon a time, all business was local. Consumers bought products and services from nearby providers – people from their own communities who understood their needs. There were crude forms of segmentation but they were instinctive and obvious. Salespeople from the dawn of time have tailored their messages according to who they were addressing.

About a hundred years ago, that started to change. Mass-produced goods and emerging global business models meant companies needed to understand in more detail the different markets they might address. Mass media accelerated the trend. When you could reach anyone via a newspaper ad or a TV commercial, understanding who might buy your product, why they might like it, where to reach them and what to say to them became much more important.

Then in July 1958, consultant marketer Wendell Smith wrote an article in the Journal of Marketing titled ‘Product Differentiation and Market Segmentation as Alternative Marketing Strategies’ – the first time the word ‘segmentation’ had been used in this context. He argued that understanding the basic facts, personality traits and needs of different groups of potential customers – and tailoring products or messaging to suit – would increase sales.

By the 1970s, Smith and his colleagues were using what became known as ‘psychographics’ (psychology plus demographics) to come up with classic market segmentations, such as the Values Attitude and Lifestyle Study (VALS) – featuring segments such as “innovators” (high-income, motivated by status and exploration) and “thinkers” (well-educated, thoughtful decision-makers open to new ideas). 

The forms of segmentation have evolved over time, as have the specific categories and personas that companies target. Sometimes it’s as crude as defining a target audience as a particular age group but it can also be a sophisticated analysis of deep emotional needs. Methodologies have adapted and diversified, too.But a couple of things remain constant for market segmentation projects. First, they look for definable truths about customers – reliable information that enables you to group them in useful ways. And segmentation remains a cornerstone of marketing campaigns. Segmentation allows companies to target high value consumers and position their product or brand in ways to maximise their performance. That ‘STP’ approach remains fundamental to good marketing.

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Different ways of segmenting your customer base

There are four main categories of information we can use to segment a market:

  • Geographic: where do people live? What is their environment like? What local factors might influence them?
  • Demographic: how old are they? What social groups do they fall into? How educated are they? How big is their family?
  • Behavioural: how do they make decisions? How do they use products? What are their attitudes to brands?
  • Needs based: What are their needs? What are their attitudes and values?

One of the most obvious ways to approach market segmentations is by generations. But people quickly realised that simply looking at age groups glossed over huge variation in attitudes and needs within generations. There are relatively few ways in which an age cohort behaves uniformly. You must ally demographic with behavioural and attitudinal insights to create segments that are truly useful.

This is illustrated by the rise and fall of the concept of ‘Millennials’. There have been a number of  well publicised marketing fails of companies targeting millennials. Lumping them all together – rich and poor, graduates and school-leavers, different countries and cultural backgrounds – is a major misstep. Millennials are hardly homogenous and treating them as one group risks alienating your customer base.

Why ‘needs’ make for compelling segments

We believe that identifying segments by exploring the needs of your potential customers is much more valuable than thinking about any demographic aspects. And this is why the vast majority of market segmentation projects are now needs-based. 

For example, you might discover that there’s a portion of the population whose prime need is for low-cost products; another seeks quality or status from their purchases; and some need to have products that meet exacting technical specifications.  Once you have those needs-based segments mapped, you can cross-reference by demographics or behaviours if that looks like a useful way of finding other people who might fall into those need groups.

Behaviours are harder to use in a predictive sense. They can change rapidly, especially as a result of external influences. Attitudes and needs, on the other hand, are more revealing and often more predictive. For example, we worked with one academic institution to segment their alumni in order to target graduates with a high propensity to make donations. The value of ‘attitude’ was illustrated by two graduates who both worked in finance in the City. They were the same age, had similar jobs and backgrounds. But one had enjoyed their time at the school and saw it as a springboard for their career; the other had not relished their time there and was considering a career change. The demographics said they were the same segment. But attitudinally, they were poles apart. Creating a segment of ‘inspired graduates’ made more sense than one of ‘rich bankers’.

Getting granular: what really makes a difference when it comes to market segmentation?

Working towards a granular market segmentation is important. If your category is too broad (e.g. ‘millennials’), it’s likely that you’ll capture too many different attitudes to be able to develop compelling strategies. When you mash together a lot of different colours, you just end up with brown. You need to be able to pick out individual colours – those different attitudes and needs – so they can be addressed in a compelling way. 

How you’re planning to address your different segments should also help frame your market segmentation strategy. For example, if you’re planning to promote a product through newspaper advertising or on TV, there’s a limit to how granular you need to get.

But as new ways of interacting with customers have evolved – particularly in the digital era – the value of finer segmentations has risen sharply. Today, using tools like email, targeted advertising, or big data analytics, the subtleties between segments can really make a difference.

Imagine you have a product to help pensioners release equity in their homes, for example. There’s an obvious demographic segmentation: you’re only interested in the over-65s. You need to conduct an inspection of their home when they apply and your valuers only cover the South East of England. In this situation, a geographic segmentation is a no-brainer. 

But then you know from your existing customer data that people with grandchildren are much more likely to want to free up cash so differentiating between them and the childless elderly is worthwhile. Financial literacy is also a key factor and how trusting of financial services companies they are. Risk appetite can’t be measured demographically but it might define your segmentation.

How to use market segments

So when companies debate which kinds of factors will define the customer personas – and how finely to segment their audience – the most useful question to ask is: how are you actually going to use the segments?

You might be a global business, looking to understand how the same six segments present in multiple countries. Will you actually be able to tailor the product or service around those segments? Can a central marketing function use them in the same way in every country? Or will local teams who understand the nuances of their own markets offer more valuable insights, and perhaps even more relevant segmentations of their own? 

Or if you have 15 market segments, for example, and identify seven of them as high priority targets, are you going to tailor your product around every one of them? If not, might there be more value in a more limited approach?

We were approached by a large global business who had segmented the entire personal care market in the UK, which resulted in a lot of different segments. These included people who did the minimum to appear presentable, using the cheapest products infrequently. At the other end were big spenders on grooming who were the real target for that brand’s products. 

How might that segmentation have been done differently? In terms of time and money, making a first cut to eliminate the parts of the market that have never shown propensity to buy the brand’s categories of product creates headroom for a deeper segmentation of those more lucrative parts of the population, allowing for more effective targeting.

Embarking on market segmentation? Start with what you already know

The first step of that segmentation journey is looking at what you already know about your existing customers. What is your data telling you? If you’re a pay TV network, for example, your database contains a lot of raw material for market segmentation. You can analyse by frequency of contact, whether someone has switched away and come back to you, whether they opt in to promotional emails, etc. Those kinds of factors alone are a good start to segmentation.

For example, we worked with an online dating service to comb through their database, identifying key segments based on usage patterns and other behaviours, then assigning all existing members to one of those segments. It was a powerful tool for the company’s call centre operators who quickly got a sense of the type of member they were talking to from the persona that popped onto their screen, as well as targeting email marketing and much more. The segments became a lens for the business to view its own customers but also gain insights into the wider market of potential users.

A high-quality customer relationship management (CRM) system is obviously a big help. You need to be in compliance with GDPR and be responsible in how data is used, of course. (And bear in mind: if you formally assign customers to a segment, they might one day see how that’s defined thanks to GDPR’s focus on subject access rights). But allying CRM analysis with an attitudinal, needs-based market segmentation can help extrapolate the behaviours you see in existing contacts to potentially untapped audiences, too.

Many traditional (typically pre-digital) businesses have started to accumulate a lot of data about customers but struggle to make the connection between what they know about them and how that might fuel a market segmentation project. Conversely, online-only businesses are typically built from the ground up around careful segmentations, whether they emerge organically from CRM data or are built as part of a formal project.

Why market personas must be instinctive

It’s important to create segments that are meaningful. The key to a really good market segmentation is that anyone can use it. 

  • It should be intuitive – so the personas you create from your segments are recognisable and understandable.
  • It should be useful to people in different functions – whether that’s new product development, marketing, communications, sales, customer service or even the finance function.
  • It should work as well for people in the boardroom as it does for people at the front line.

That means how you brand your segments is actually a very important part of the process. We all know some famous segment names – DINKYs (Dual Income No Kids); Yuppies (Young Urban Professionals); Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman in the UK, and Soccer Moms in the US. They’re memorable and self-explanatory.

When you’re working on a market segmentation project, you need to bear in mind who’ll be using the segment analysis. That should be everyone, from the board to the call centre operative. Without their buy-in (and their insights) it’s much harder to make the segmentation intuitive. Each segment must make sense to them and tell at least part of the story.

At Kadence, we also have a graphic design team in-house. The use of visuals to bring a segmentation to life is critical, not only to make it live on in the organisation but to frame an understanding of the segments. We often produce documentary videos to show what kind of people are in each segment and how they behave or react.

The impact of market segmentation

What difference does market segmentation make to key decisions? Which decisions does it most affect? We see many different benefits from market segmentations. For example:

Incremental gains in congested markets. Successful products and services rely on fine-tuning to gain market share or increase sell-through with existing audiences. Segmentation allows you to identify how to exploit opportunities in underserved areas, or segments where rivals currently outperform.

Product evolution. Segmenting the market allows you to see what other underserved needs exist in groups that are already customers, allowing you to fine-tune your offer, especially if the product or service has flexible elements built in.

Targeted communications. Even email costs money (and goodwill, if it’s perceived as spam). Identifying common traits among high-propensity segments not only allows for less wasted communications, it also allows those comms to be fine-tuned for maximum impact.

Smarter automation. Customer service and call centres are increasingly reliant on automated systems. A solid market segmentation can help ensure those interactions are properly tailored and high-value segments are prioritised.

Extrapolating from the existing customer base. Market segmentation can help identify traits in existing customers that might be shared by other segments that don’t seem at first glance to be fertile markets.

New product development and launch. You might already have an idea of the types of customers a product will work for, or situations where it might be applied. You might not even need a market segmentation in the development phase but once a product or service has launched, the need to optimise its performance becomes much greater. Who’s actually using it? How? Why? Those early adopters (another classic segment) can help define and exploit other segments of consumers.

The role of market segmentation within your long-term strategy

A market segmentation project, done right, is extremely valuable but it’s also a significant undertaking. Segmentation studies aren’t designed to be done every year – ideally it should have a five or even ten year shelf life.

Even then, some events are so huge as to require a fresh look at segmentation. The Covid-19 pandemic has prompted many businesses to refresh their buyer personas. For the bulk of 2020, people’s lives have been artificially constrained. How someone behaves or reacts, what they prioritise in life, and even what values they have, are all affected by ‘not going out’. 

Even when lockdowns (hopefully) abate in 2021, how the market breaks down for previously predictable products – from personal grooming and alcohol, to cars and holidays – is going to be quite different to what went before. And it’s very unlikely the old segments will move to adapt to the new reality in precisely the same ways.

We’ve already seen some significant pandemic-inspired segmentation projects, with brands wanting to understand how their market breaks down now that people are eating out much less and work-from-home consumers are shopping differently. Previous segments might not be helpful: do you need to re-cut by job status, for example, given higher unemployment?

It doesn’t matter whether you’re targeting niche markets and need to understand where to find them, or want to tailor a broad-based approach to maximise penetration among different personas, an effective segmentation will set you up for success. Find out more about our experience in running market segmentation studies, or get in touch with our team to discuss a specific challenge. 

Market segmentation studies help businesses understand the distinct groups of people that make up their market. They work by grouping customers with similar attributes. This allows companies to identify and target the segments with most value to the business.

What is the purpose of market segmentation?

One of the big questions we get asked about this type of research is “what is the purpose of market segmentation?”

It’s not uncommon to hear people asking:

  • “What’s the value of focusing in on specific segments rather than trying to appeal to the mass market as a whole?”
  • “Surely, my best chance of success comes from targeting anyone and everyone that could buy my product, rather than on particular groups?”

In short, we don’t believe it does. Market segmentations can be powerful tools for any business. Targeting specific high-potential segments makes commercial sense and boosts the bottom line. Why?

First of all, not all customers are of equal value to your business. Imagine you’re a charity. Not everyone gives equally. They’ll be those that donate small amounts every now and again. They’ll be others that consistently contribute bigger sums, driven by a connection to your cause. It makes business sense to understand the latter segment. That way you can better appeal to these people and actively target them in your fundraising and marketing campaigns.

The second is that customers are different and have different needs. This is important to recognise for a whole host of business activities – from product development to marketing to customer service. By understanding who you are targeting and shaping your strategy around their needs, you can cut through and create a better experience for your customers.

(Take a look at our guide to market segmentation for more insights on how to better understand your market).

How market segmentation studies can inform your strategy

The results of a market segmentation study can guide strategy development in the following areas:

Designing more successful products and services

Successful product and service design relies on meeting customer needs. Rather than trying to be all things to all people, focusing on specific segments allows you to really understand the pain points your target customers face. You can use this to inform product and service design, helping you to create solutions that really delight.

Developing more effective marketing campaigns

Segmentation studies help you understand who to target. They can also reveal how to speak to your target customers. The result? You’re able to spend your marketing dollars more wisely and achieve greater cut through with your comms.

There are numerous ways for marketers to segment their audiences and tailor marketing easily. Email marketing to granular digital advertising to name but a few. Against this backdrop, a one-size-fits-all-approach is not enough. Segmentations allows you create sophisticated marketing strategies based on the principle that different consumers respond to different messages.

Offering more relevant customer service

Segmentations don’t just benefit marketers. They can have impact right across a business. We’ve worked with companies to empower their customer service reps by helping them understand the different type of customers that exist. For instance, we worked with a dating app to build a segmentation and integrate it into their CRM system. That way, when a customer interacted with the brand, it was easy for the customer service team to see which segment they belonged to. This approach can be really valuable. It helps customer service reps to react in the most appropriate manner to meet the customer’s needs and the company’s corporate objectives.

Using your resources most effectively

Segmentation studies can be really useful in helping businesses understand where to focus their time, money and resources for maximum effect. Insight from a segmentation study can inform how you spend your marketing budget, determine where you focus your sales staff or how you deliver your customer service.

Whether the applications of segmentations are made to product development, marketing, service or resource / budget allocation, ultimately they help businesses to better understand their target audiences and become more customer centric. The result (and the ultimate purpose for conducting a segmentation)? You’re able to create superior customer experiences that meet and exceed your customers’ needs.

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What does a typical market segmentation study look like?

Like all of the market research projects we work on, each segmentation is designed around our client’s needs. That said, most segmentation projects involve the following stages:

Immersion  

The first step in any successful situation is immersion. This is where the agency tasked with creating the segmentation works closely with key stakeholders in a series of workshops. The purpose of these sessions is to understand the existing knowledge within the business. This can allow you to begin developing hypotheses for potential segments. Immersion sessions align key project stakeholders, ensuring that the segmentation delivers for the business. The immersion stage also has a role in establishing buy-in to the project early on. This will encourage greater adoption of the segments in the long term

Fieldwork

Next comes the fieldwork itself. This allows the business to understand more about its customers and gather the data needed to create the segments. The fieldwork stage will typically involve a quantitative study for collecting this data. However, the research that takes place around it can differ from project to project. Some segmentations we run involve a qualitative stage up front to test hypotheses. Other involve omnibus studies to determine the incidence of customers and non-customers in the wider population.

Creating the segmentation solution

After the data has been collected, data analytics allow us to find the survey variables which best define the segments. We work closely with stakeholders to create a segmentation solution that is:

  • Actionable (allows you to target the segments at both a tactical and strategic level)
  • Future-proofed (will stand the test of time)
  • Intuitive (easy to understand)

This stage of a segmentation also typically involves understanding the current and potential value of the segments and detailed analysis to understand the individual characteristics of each segment. It’s also when the all-important segment naming takes place. Giving segments memorable names shouldn’t be underestimated. This allows people across the business to instantly grasp what that segment is about. This can be crucial for helping embed and encourage adoption of the segments.

Bringing the segments to life

After you’ve settled on your segmentation solution, the next stage is to bring the segments to life. A lengthy PowerPoint might give the insight or marketing team the information they need. But it’s likely to be too detailed for other functions. Developing impactful deliverables that allow people to easily understand the segments should be high on your priority list if you’re leading a segmentation. This could be anything from posters through to infographics. One of the key deliverables we see many organisations investing in is short documentary videos that bring segments to life. It’s human nature to be able to remember stories and characters better than numbers or data points. That’s why videos like these can really help segments live on in an organisation, ensuring the segments are front of mind when making business decisions.

Activating the segments

It’s not enough to hope that stakeholders will embrace and use the segments. This process needs to be actively managed. One way to do this is by running activation workshops. This is where you work closely with individual functions to help them understand the segments and what they mean for their department and their role. These sessions are action orientated, focused on understanding the opportunities and implications for strategic planning.

Segmentations can be powerful tools for businesses. Find out more about our capabilities in this area or get in touch to discuss a specific project.

Market segmentations studies are powerful tools for businesses. They help organisations divide up the market into distinct segments that share specific attributes. The business can then focus on the most lucrative of these market segments. Segmentations can guide everything from marketing to product development right through to identifying new market opportunities. In this article we outline the key benefits of this approach.

The benefits of market segmentation studies

Focus on the customers that matter most

The core principle at the heart of market segmentation is to break the market down into groups of customers than you can target, rather than addressing the market as a whole. Rather than being all things to all people, this approach allows you to zone in on the most valuable customers for your organisation so that you can focus your efforts where it matters most.

So what does this look like in practice? A recent case study brings this to life. We partnered with a leading university to design a segmentation of its alumni. Securing donations from alumni is a core revenue stream for universities. You might assume that targeting all alumni equally would be sure-fire way to elicit donations. But in reality, it’s a small proportion of alumni that make the most difference.

There are many ways of segmenting a market. In this instance, we opted for a needs based segmentation, where we explored the attitudes and values of past students. A demographic segmentation would have allowed us to target those in the highest income bracket or those in particular professions. But actually what mattered in this case was the attitudes of the alumni towards the university. We helped our client see that those that had enjoyed their time there and considered it a valuable stepping stone towards their future career were most likely to donate. Dividing the market up in this way means that you can focus on the customers that are most profitable or easiest to convert. This in turn helps to lower your acquisition costs.

Power new product development

Another benefit of carrying out a market segmentation study is that it can uncover new opportunities for innovation. Needs based segmentations are particularly valuable for this purpose. They do as the name suggests: break the market up into distinct segments based on different customer needs. This can be a great starting point for innovation. By understanding what customers are looking for from your brand or the category and the pain points they face, you can identify whitespace and design products, services and experiences that truly meet their needs.

Segmentation studies can also help post launch. They can help you to understand where a specific product falls down versus consumer needs and how it can be improved to pull ahead of the competition.

Design more effective marketing

Segmentation studies can also provide valuable input to your marketing strategies. Not only do they indicate who to target, but they can also reveal where to market to these people and how to speak to them. The result? You’re able to spend your marketing dollars more wisely and achieve greater cut through with your comms.

Your firm could be investing in TV advertising year after year, hoping to reach as much of the mass market as possible. A segmentation might reveal that in actual fact, the people you want to target are Instagram addicts or avid readers of a particular publication. These people could be reached on these channels at a much cheaper price. In a world where we’re able to harness digital platforms to target at such a granular level, understanding who to reach and where to find them is vital for any successful marketing strategy

Another application of a segmentation to marketing strategy development is in shaping your marketing messaging. Different customers react differently to different messages and segmentations can help you understand what to say to who. Imagine you’re a mobile phone company, with a broad audience spanning all ages and levels of tech proficiency. Segmenting your customer base will allow you to create targeted campaigns that appeal to the needs of each segment. Your early adopters may want to see the tech spec of your new devices front and centre. But your bargain hunters are likely to want to see something else entirely. By taking a targeted approach to your marketing, you’ll achieve better engagement with your campaigns and maximise conversion.

Deliver better customer service

Segmentation studies are often mistakenly seen as being something that belongs to the marketing department. But in actual fact, to get real value out of a segmentation, the segments should be shared with and understood by everyone in a business – from the CEO right through to the cashiers on the tills.

We worked with an online dating service to identify key segments based on usage patterns and other behaviours. We then assigned all existing customers in the company’s database into one of these segments. This information popped up wherever the customer interacted with the firm. This was a powerful tool for the company’s call centre operators who quickly got a sense of the type of person they were talking to – and could understand how best to approach them. This is something you’ll have recognised in your interactions with brands yourself. That network provider that offers you new benefits to stay at the slightest hint you’re dissatisfied? The TV provider that knows just what service to offer you based on your viewing history? These are all based on powerful segmentations designed to empower those working in customer service. Armed with the right knowledge, customer service agents are able to up-sell or aid customer retention.

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Use your resources more efficiently

As the examples above demonstrate segmentation studies can be really useful in helping businesses understand where to focus. This can allow for more efficient use of resources – be they human resources (e.g. getting a sales team to focus on a specific market segment for their outbound activities), or budget (e.g. investing in a trade show that you know is popular with your target customer).

This emphasis on using resources wisely is why market segmentation studies can be most useful for the businesses that are least likely to consider them: SMEs. The most effective market segmentations do require some investment as they rely on market research to understand behaviours, attitudes, values and needs. But until you’re able to invest, our advice is to start small. Take a more basic approach to segmentation. This could be a geographic segmentation. You could also segment on demographic factors or on behavioural data if you’re lucky enough to have this to hand. This can cut through the noise and provide some much needed focus for your business.

Develop a more customer centric culture

A further benefit of a market segmentation is that it can result in a more customer-centric company culture, encouraging employees across departments to truly understand your target market and their needs, and to place this at the heart of everything they do.

But it’s important to recognise that developing a segmentation alone will not automatically result in a shift in company culture. This needs to be actively managed, and there are a number of things you can do to encourage this.
The first is to secure buy in to the segmentation early on. You can do this by working with key stakeholders to make them sure they are involved and engaged in the process. Segmentations can be disruptive. Ensuring that the people that will using it feel a degree of ownership of the customer segments is critical if they are to be embraced and adopted in the long-term.

The second is to make sure that segments themselves are clearly communicated across the organisation. Segments should be easy to understand and to distinguish from one another. Visual outputs can be a helpful tool in aiding understanding and memorability. Over the years, our in-house design team has developed a range of deliverables that have transformed slides that may not have made it beyond the insight department into easily accessible outputs that help all employees to embrace the segments and ensure they live on in the business. These deliverables should be shared far and wide. Everyone – from the engineer working on a new model of car to the sales team at the dealership – should be able to visualise the segments and have them front of mind in their day-to-day work.

Our final tip for encouraging a more customer-centric culture is to activate the segments and embed them into future strategy. We often work closely with individual teams to help them understand what the segments mean for their department and their role.

Create a superior experience for customers

Ultimately, the real benefit of a segmentation is the impact for the end customer. Targeted marketing, great customer service and innovation rooted in customer needs will come together to create a fantastic customer experience that drives brand loyalty.

Segmentations can be powerful tools. In a world where behaviours, needs and attitudes have drastically shifted, they are more important than ever before. Find out more about our experience in running market segmentation studies, or get in touch to discuss a specific challenge.


Market segmentations can be powerful tools for companies big and small. By tailoring your strategy based on the needs of your key customer segments, you can better appeal to the customers that matter most. But how do you segment your audience and what are the different forms of segmentation you can use?

There are 5 main types of segmentation

A segmentation divides the market up into distinct groups of customers, and identifies those that are most valuable to your business. There are 5 main ways you can do this. 

Geographic segmentation

The first and most basic form of segmentation is geographic segmentation. This approach to segmentation looks to create groups of customers based on the following factors:

  • Country
  • Region
  • City 
  • Area e.g. urban, suburban, rural
  • Climate or season
  • Timezone
  • Language

Geographic data is some of the easiest data to obtain and analyse, and for some businesses this can be a useful way of segmenting the market. Imagine you’re an automotive manufacturer selling a four wheel drive. Segmenting the market based on location could be useful as a starting point as you’re likely to have much greater success targeting those in rural locations than urban centres. But this example shows that the effectiveness of a geographic segmentation is limited. There are a number of other factors that play into willingness to buy a four wheel drive – income level, lifestage, previous purchase patterns, attitudes and values all play a role too.

This demonstrates that in most cases segmenting on geographic factors alone is insufficient. Doing so can lead you down a dangerous path. Assuming that all customers are the same simply because they live in the same place is reductionist and can risk stereotyping and as a result, alienating customers. 

Demographic segmentation

As the name suggests, a demographic segmentation seeks create customer segments based on demographic information including:

  • Age 
  • Gender
  • Income level 
  • Level of education 

As with a geographic segmentation, this is one of the easiest ways for a company to approach segmentation as demographic data on existing customers is easy to collect and in many cases, is already readily accessible in a company CRM system.

It does have some uses. For instance, if you’re a luxury brand, focusing on existing or potential customers who earn above a certain income threshold is a no-brainer, as it means you’re able to focus your resources on the people that are most likely to be able to buy your product. 

That said, segmenting on demographic factors alone has been largely discredited, as whilst people may be the same age or earn a similar amount, this does not mean they are all the same. 

That said, many brands still seem to be falling into the trap of targeting based on generational differences and the current obsession with “millennials” or “Gen Z” is case in point. Joon, Air France’s failed attempt to to create an airline for millennials, shows the danger in doing this. The airline played into all the stereotypes about this segment – hip and trendy uniforms for the crew, digital services including VR headsets on board and quinoa front and centre in the in-flight menu. Unsurprisingly, the concept alienated target and non-customers alike and the airline flopped.

Firmographic segmentation

A firmographic segmentation is often used for segmenting B2B customers. It relies on similar principles to a demographic segmentation, looking at factors about current and target companies such as:

  • Company size
  • Industry 
  • Job title

Like geographic and demographic segmentations, this type of data is readily available either in a company CRM system or online so can be a good starting point for businesses wanting to segment the market and focus on the customers with most potential. But when working in B2B, we mustn’t forget that the clients we are dealing aren’t just companies. They are people too. A marketing manager in a small firm in the professional services sector might have more in common with a marketer in a large FMCG firm than with their peers, as their motivations and values may be similar. 

Behavioural segmentation 

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More sophisticated forms of segmentation look not just at who consumers are, but how they behave in relation to your brand and category. Behavioural segmentations do what they say on the tin, they analyse customers based on their past behaviours such as:

  • Spending patterns 
  • Browsing history 
  • Interactions with the brand 

Behavioural segmentations have become popular with digital first brands and B2B firms embracing marketing automation, as not only can this data be easily gathered and analysed, but once the segmentation has been finalised, it’s possible to allocate customers to a segment and then tailor comms accordingly – all within the digital ecosystem. For instance, a first time buyer will receive different promotions and messaging to a returning customer. This can be very powerful, ensuring that marketing campaigns have more cut through and result in greater conversion.

However there are some drawbacks. Behavioural segmentations are predominantly based on a consumer’s digital footprint. As we’re all aware, this only tells half the story. Whilst you might be able to identify that a customer is looking for a new pair of shoes, you won’t know why. As such, marketing strategies based on behavioural segmentations tend to be quite product-focused and won’t necessarily connect with consumers on a deeper level. Behavioural segmentations are also less helpful for informing product development. Sure – you’ll be able to ascertain the product or service a customer is interested in right now, but behavioural segmentations don’t take into account customer needs which can reveal opportunities for innovation or to optimise your existing offering.

Needs based segmentation 

The fifth and final type of segmentation is a needs based segmentation. Needs based segmentations look to segment customers based on attitudinal factors such as:

  • Needs
  • Values
  • Motivations
  • Priorities

Needs based segmentations are widely regarded as the most effective approach to take segmentation and as such, make up the vast majority of segmentations used by businesses nowadays. Why?

Needs based segmentations don’t assume that people are the same simply because they share geographic or demographic characteristics or because they’ve bought the same thing. Instead they look deeper, creating groups of people based on shared needs and values.

This can be extremely powerful as it allows you to understand how your product or brand fits into customers’ lives, helping to put their needs at the heart of your strategy and allowing you to be more customer-centric as a business.

Segmenting based on needs can power innovation by illuminating unmet needs or areas where your product or service falls short. It can provide inspiration for powerful marketing campaigns that align with consumers’ attitudes and values, creating a strong connection with the brand and fostering loyalty.

Market segmentation studies can be powerful tools for any business. Find out more about our capabilities in this area or get in touch to discuss a new project with us. We’d be happy to share our expertise.