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The four ‘B’s of market segmentation for product managers & designers
Based on the general customer behaviour patterns found in most businesses.
Understanding the specific customer personas of any business is very important but it is not an overnight activity or a month or a year for that matter. It is more of the recurring patterns identified from a holistic understanding of major user groups with similar characteristics. Personas are ever-evolving with time and other external forces that change people and their behaviours.
In this article, I am sharing something that helped me when I was put into a new context where there are only a few formal records of information about the key user groups and their behaviour patterns. It is a tricky situation to be in when you are expected to start delivering outputs the next day in a typical corporate environment. This hack has worked like a charm in most cases and helped me gather quick understanding to get started.
The trick here is, it helps in easily extracting the raw information from the other stakeholders who are familiar with the products or services. This primarily helps in putting together user patterns into predefined yet universal categories, especially when you do not have a specific and meaningful categorization identified.
Considering the instant familiarity due to the fundamental customer characteristics it is mostly safe to assume that it cannot go completely wrong. It also helps the stakeholders to respond with higher confidence. As a result, without going into deep research the teams can extract some patterns of behaviours that unblock the design and product management team to get started with the projects with fair confidence.
The 4 ‘B’s
These 4 universal categories are derived from the maturity stages that any customer would undergo in their journey with most businesses' offerings before they become loyal to the brand. The higher the maturity, the better the return on investment for brands through the potential lifetime value created by their customers.
1. The Blind
These are none other than the entire set of people that falls well inside your potential target group but have not even remotely recognised the problem itself in the first place, so the solutions brought to them fall on their blind spot. It may be due to the lacking perception, awareness, or judgement. As a result these potential customers just do not think they need to even fix something.
e.g.
Let’s imagine there are these four customer types and two or more competing e-commerce platforms as an example to explain the proposed model.
The Blind type is someone who is a smartphone user, and a potential customer despite having some limitations and hurdles. That expands the market size considerably for any e-commerce player, especially in India.
However, many people due to low digital literacy and so many other factors, would not even consider that they could actually buy things using their smartphone. That makes these folks a dormant yet potential customer. Such people would even travel long distances to the cities spending more money to buy something they could have purchased just in a few steps.
These are the kind who are not even remotely aware that they have the ability to use such products and services saving the trouble of additional expenses, time and convenience.
2. The Beginner
These are the people who are just recognised that there is a problem but have no idea where and how it could be fixed or if they could even afford a fix. They might even be sceptical about the solutions even if someone offers one as they are not yet completely ready to trust the affordance of the proposed solution to a particular problem they face.
e.g.
Beginners are the ones who are aware of their abilities and capacity. However maybe they do not have enough trust in the product or services to try for the first time, or it could be other reasons. These people would probably buy other things online but when it comes to high-ticket items for instance they will resort to the traditional ways to buy. They are probably open to exploring but are not quite ready yet.
3. The Buyer
These are the ones who believe their problem can be solved and are aware of various solutions in the market. They are very clear they need one or the other but solve the problem. Such people are ready to buy from anyone who convinces them first and would go with the other if there are certain advantages in doing so. Their decision-making is largely depended on what they think is the priority and for that, they are okay to let go of certain benefits. Their need is purely transactional and does not keep any particular affection towards any particular brand or solution type.
e.g.
The buyers are the seasoned people who buy things online every day, but they have all the e-commerce apps available to them. They will only buy online always, but not necessarily from one platform. Maybe if there is an offer he/she gets from a platform, they go there and the next day when the other one offers a bigger discount they might even cancel the previous one to order from the second one.
4. The Believer
These are the ultimate loyal ones. The evangelists within the target group of your business. Their loyalty is so deep and strong, no matter what the competitors do to sway them towards the other side, the believers stick with their one favourite brand even if it cost them more to stay. Such people would also act as strong apostles even if the brand is going through a major setback phase in its business.
e.g.
Believers are the ones who are so loyal that they do not even bother to keep multiple apps of the same kind. They are not going to get attracted by any number of offers and marketing campaigns done by the competitors to a great extent. They will not only be very forgiving to their favourite brand, for the glitches and issues but also be very happy to help the brands to rectify the issues.
Conclusion
At a very basic level, the growth story of every business is depending on how they are able to acquire new customers and retain the old ones and take the largest share of the potential customers of the available market size. This problem statement poses the next important question, who you are trying to serve?
The strategies in serving each one of the above customer groups can create a balanced approach towards addressing the overall market and it can even help the businesses to pick and choose which one to particularly focus on in a particular phase of their journey.
A deep understanding of differences among the customers in some meaningful ways will always help in creating unique product strategies to keep straight and sharp communication that can yield higher results. In the end, whatever you build, if it does not ring a bell with your potential customers(at different phases of their journey) in the way they want to hear(not what you want to say), no businesses would reach their true potential share of the available market.
On that note, the universal north star for every brand is to convert all potential customers in the market into their believers.
Cheers,
Dhaneesh Jameson | LinkedIn | Twitter
(Product Design Leader, Filmmaker)
