Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

Communication behaviour
A further behavioural variable used in consumer segmentation studies has been the degree 
of communication with others about the product of interest.
Opinion leaders can be particularly influential in the early stages of the product life 
cycle. Recording companies, for example, recognise the influence that disc jockeys have on 
the record-buying public and attempt to influence them with free music and other induce-
ments to play their CDs. In many fields, however, identifying opinion leaders is not so easy. 
As with innovators, opinion leaders tend to lead opinion only in their own interest areas. 
A further problem with satisfying opinion leaders is that they tend to have fairly strong 
opinions themselves and can often be a very heterogeneous group (disc jockeys providing 
a good example).
In addition to information-giving behaviour (as displayed by opinion leaders), markets 
could be segmented on the basis of information-seeking behaviour. The information seekers 
may be a particularly attractive segment for companies basing their strategy on promotional 
material with a heavy information content.
Response to elements of the marketing mix
The use of elasticities of response to changes in marketing-mix variables as a basis for 
segmentation is particularly attractive as it can lead to more actionable findings, indicat-
ing where marketing funds can best be allocated. Identifying, for example, the deal-prone 
consumer or the advertising-responsive segment has immediate appeal. There are, however, 
methodological problems in research in identifying factors such as responsiveness to changes 
in price.
Relationship-seeking characteristics
A related characteristic for segmentation that is attracting some attention in the light of 
the move towards relationship marketing (see Chapter 4) is the relationship requirements of 
customers. One initial model suggests that the relationship-seeking characteristics of cus-
tomers differ in the type of relationship customers want with suppliers (for example, long 
term versus short term and transactional) and the intimacy customers want in the relation-
ship (for example, close or distant). This suggests the potential for segmenting markets into 
such groups as the following, and linking this to other variables:
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