Design Considerations
Episode 05
Market Segmentation: Episode 05 Transcript
Hi, I’m Felicia Rogers, Executive Vice President with Decision Analyst, here with the Segmentation Segment. Today I’d like to talk about a few design considerations for your segmentation projects. Really, there are three key high-level elements to consider, and those are; the respondent sample, the questionnaire design, and some analytical components.
First, let’s talk about the respondent sample. This is really one of the most critical decisions to be made, because the survey results will be only as good as the foundation that we set with the respondent sample, and of course we want our foundation to be very solid. So, the sample should be fairly broadly defined; the idea is to break this population of people into smaller subgroups, or clusters, or segments. And so, for example, we may want to segment all personal-vehicle shoppers or all home remodelers, and so we want to be sure also that the sample source is going to produce a solid cross section of those populations. If we happen to accidentally miss some of the people in the population, then our results would be skewed.
Secondly, the questionnaire design is another critical component of considering a segmentation design. We want to make sure that all of the questions and data that will come from the questionnaire will be useful in the segmentation. So, we need to include a variety of question types. Some of these will be used directly in the segment model, things like, perhaps, attitudes and behaviors, product-category usage, lifestyles and demographics, and several other things. And then we also need to make sure we include other types of questions to help us further understand the segments and profile them. Those could be things like brand awareness and usage, product-category behavior, shopping behavior, media usage and preferences, demographics, and life-stage information.
And then, finally, some of the analytical components for our segmentation can actually be built right into the survey design. A really good example of this is maximum difference scaling, or MaxDiff. This is really a trade-off technique that allows the survey taker to make a series of choices and do so very easily within the context of the survey, and it can actually help us define the segments.
So, [to] quickly recap, there are three high-level, very important elements in designing your segmentation project. Those are the respondent sample, the questionnaire design, and some of the analytical components. So, I appreciate you joining us today, and I would like to invite you to be with us in our next segment, where we’ll talk about choosing the best segmentation solution.
Presenter
Felicia Rogers
Executive Vice President
Felicia Rogers is a dynamic insights consultant who leverages decades of business and consumer research experience. During her career, she has partnered with companies across an array of categories. Felicia began her career in print advertising and has since spent most of her professional life in various consumer insights roles at Decision Analyst. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing, from the University of North Texas.
