Defining Consumer Groups and Segments

 For your brand to successfully market its products and connect with your consumers, it’s essential to define your target audience. Gathering and interpreting information about your intended consumers on their income level, age, gender, and other demographics, will help underline your brand’s positioning and inform your overall marketing strategy.

Watch Paul Egan, Co-Convenor on the Market Research, Consumer Insights, and Competitive Analysis online short course from the University of Cape Town, discuss the importance of understanding consumer purchase behaviour.

Transcript

A consumer is anyone who buys a product or service so that they or others can consume it. The keyword here is “consumer”, which means they are going to use it for personal consumption.

So, we all consume products and services from food to banking, but imagine you are at the mall and picture the wide range of consumers that you might see. For example, you may see teenagers hanging out at the movies, a businesswoman buying a wrap for her lunch break, while a gamer is looking at new technologies. These are all consumers occupying the same space, but with different wants and needs when it comes to their purchasing behaviour. This is an important consideration for brands if they are to be successful. Knowing as much about the group they are trying to appeal to is paramount if that brand is going to connect. However, not everyone in that market is the same.

Different consumer groups

Most marketers are concerned with the group of consumers they are trying to appeal to. These groups are often known as segments. For example, a group of consumers who are able to buy a Ferrari is very different to a group who are able to afford base-level cell phones. 

One of the main ways to group consumers is through demographics. In South Africa, perhaps the biggest factor to consider when defining consumer groups is income. In a country which has the biggest inequality in the world, there are vast differences between consumer groups. For example, the richest 5 per cent of South African households earn 20 times more than the poorest 10 per cent. This is important as there is no point in targeting consumers who simply cannot afford your product or service. 

Other ways consumers can be grouped are numerous. Gender is just one of the ways. Some products are designed or aimed specifically at one gender; sanitary pads is an obvious example. Geography is another example. If your product or service only services certain geographies, there’s no point researching outside of that, unless your intention is to expand.

Lots of marketers talk about life stages. Someone who is a pensioner is unlikely to behave in the same way as a 20 year old. A common life stage breakdown is youth, those 18 to 24, singles or committed couples, moving on to young families, then to older families, then we hear about empty-nesters and retired. 

Then we have those who use a product or service versus those who don’t. If you want to find out views of a certain type of motorbike, there’s no point asking people who don’t ride motorbikes or have no intention of ever riding one. 

Besides demographics, consumers are also commonly grouped according to attitudes and lifestyle preferences. For example, an organic brand may be trying to appeal to people who embrace the idea of organic food and believe it is important. Or DSTV may be keen to appeal to people who love sport. Cape Union Mart positions its brand around adventure and will attempt to appeal to consumers who love the outdoors.

With any market research, it’s important to consider the group of consumers that you want to talk to. This will ensure that the research is focused and that way you can save a lot of time and money.