To Segment or Not to Segment

That is the question. Segmentation is often seen as a marketer’s best friend. Through segmentation, you are able to find your target market, identify their needs and really get to the core of who your customers are. In many ways, we have become accustomed to the luxuries that segmentation offers. If it wasn’t for segmentation, you wouldn’t receive new show suggestions after binge-watching a series.

The truth is, segmentation allows for customers to get more of what they want and leads them to choices that are better suited for them. For instance, I am a frequent user of Google. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t use Google. I also really love food. Luckily for me, Google has this capability where when you go on Google Maps, it shows you different restaurants near you that are suggested based on other restaurants you’ve visited. This gives you options to new restaurants that you’ve never tried as well as confidence that you will like them based on the data of restaurants you frequently visit.

Another example of good segmentation is Costco. Costco offers a select amount of products in bulk quantities. In terms of offerings, they don’t have every product, they also don’t have very many sizes. Usually, its a one size fits all with very limited options. This has been a success for the organization and has been beneficial for their consumers.

Of course, there are times that segmentation can be a bad thing. For example, sometimes websites like Amazon can be overwhelming to consumers with the number of choices it offers. Say you’re looking for a long sleeve sweater and decided to search the website, over 40,000 results show up. Even if filter the results by color or only look for Prime products, there are still over 20,000 results that show up. This amount of choices can be confusing to consumers because there are just too many and can discourage customers from continuing their search.

So some choices are good. In fact, consumers thrive from having a select number of choices. Just don’t throw every possibility their way.