Market Segmentation

1. The Demographic Variables

1.1 Age, Life-Cycle Stage and Family Size
As the consumers have experienced many life-stage changes during their lifetimes,
their purchasing habits and preferences vary. Hence marketers should comprehend the
possible change of its customer’s preferences in order to have advantege over their
competitors. In Turkey nowadays, the number of working women has been increasing, which
result in the boost of consumption of convenience foods. To have distinct advantege, D&B
have been incessantly doing research on life-changing events. That’s why D&B tries to meet
its customer’s needs with introduction of package food which can be easily cooked.

1.2 Gender and Diversity

Men and women really do have principally different set of characteristics and
properties. For example, while the colour of package even can be important factors that
affect the buying decision of women, men do not really respond to any colours and images
well. Since the ancient times women are dubbed as gatherer, while men dubbed as hunter,
which means while the gathering activity requires a process to accomplish, hunting activity
focuses on outcomes rather than process. It is thus obvious that women tend to be more
focused whereas men want to get quick answers. However nowadays, preferences of men is
getting closer to the preferences of women especially in beauty sector, and so marketers
ought to pay close attention to changes in the gender segment.
For a long time people who don’t feel themselves as a person that society defines
have difficulty in expression of themselves since the society held negative attitudes toward
homosexuals, and the most adverse side of that type of attitudes toward gay and lesbian
people is that it is not unidimensional,which means it stem from several factors including
beliefs and culture that are inhereted by the society in which you live. However today, mean
of the diversity goes beyond ethnic heritage and reach the point which covers gay and
lesbian people. Corporations try to adopt gay and lesbian people to society by opening new
areas for them. D&B is targeting LGBT community with specific efforts such as providing
genderless W.C in its store and every year on 28June the date of Stonewall riots supporting
them by selling product with package which consist of rainbow colours. D&B also aims at
reaching people with disabilities as well as gay and lesbians. D&B fairly benefits from WOM
marketing by hiring people with obstacles, and those people share their opinion and
satisfaction on brand. Since they are both users and employees of the brand, spread stem
from them to other disabled people is considered as more reliable than the spread stem
from any other people. In addition to hiring people with disabilities, D&B get involved in
community organizations and local projects which support disabilities by means of the social
benefits.
 1.3 Generation
Since each generation has unique experiences and characteristics that affect their
purchasing behavior, marketers should identify them in different way. For a long time,
generation- based segmentation has been one of the most popular segmentation because it
is relatively easy to interpret the need of consumers who share common social, political and
economic environment. D&B particularly target the Millennials which also called as
Generation Y, which provide D&B to conduct two-way brand conversation rather than
having mass marketing messages. Reaching Millennials effectively however requires creative
marketing strategies which consist of making use of social media, Internet sites and video
games as well as word of mouth channels, and therefore websites of D&B is made up of
discussion board, photo upload part, and other interactive elements which attract
consumers.

2. Geographic Segmentation
Geographic segmentation is one of the most common segmentation with demographic
segmentation, which enables companies to divide the market into different geographical
units because different regions, nations or population density have different cultures,
climates, characteristics and resources. Differences that each geographical unit has influence
the customers’ buying decision.
For instance; especially affluent people nowadays has been moving from cities to
suburbs in order to have simple, peaceful and content life. Migration toward suburban areas
resulted in swift increase in the number of people working at home and unavailability of
accessing supermarket readily. Therefore, D&B has created application system which
provides services via mobile phone for working people who don’t have time to leave for
shopping and for people who don’t have feasibility to do shopping easily. D&B stresses that
‘All you need is to click the application and to match your needs and wants with distinct
products waiting for you’

3. Psychographic Segmentation
As people in the same demographic group may have very different psychographic
features, marketers ought to measure consumers’ AIO(activities,interests, opinions) as well
as lifestyle which describes how you live to capture information about tendency of
consumers to purchase. Incorporating psychological outcomes into purchasing behavior
appeared more rebarbative several decades ago, for example Henry Ford issued the
statement that you can have any color you want so long as it's black, yet he ignored the
personality and lifestyle of consumers, and that challenge has been met with considerable
success over the years. Consumers are seeking for a brand which represents their lifestyle, it
is therefore so obvious that organizations are expected to understand the things which
consumers want to acquire.
 For example; whilst the Efes beer is generally consumed by people who has masculine
attitude, Miller beer is consumed mostly by people who has feminine attitude. In addition to
beer illustration, Marlboro can also be given as an example of the brand of masculine
manners’. On the other hand, marketers may have an impact on buying decision’s of
consumers with the help of personality(id,ego,superego.) For instance, Nike aims at
triggering the Id by emphasizing ‘Just Do It’ slogan,which means that no matter what people
think or believe, you can do whataver you want. It is because the customers that make the
company lucrative, all aspects of customers including lifestyle should be counted on
seriously in order to capture them and make them the part of brand. Since D&B targets the
Generation Y, music genre which is allowed to play in D&B mostly comprises of the musics
which captivate the Millenials.

4. Behavioral Segmentation
Behavioral segmentation is the process of finding groups of customers who has similar
behavioral patterns. According to Kotler and Armstrong, behavioral-based segmentation
including, dividing the market into groups according to the different benefit that consumers
seek from the product and loyalty status is the best starting point for building market
segments, yet it is difficult to identify behavioral segment without demographic and
psychographic characteristic. Since marketing effectiveness measured by means of variables
such as customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and sales growth is closely related to
behavioral segmentation, marketers should take into consideration each variables in order
to overcome the dynamic market environment. For example; when a customer who want to
acquire a toothpaste may have different benefits seeking from a toothpaste such as getting
whitest teeth or decay prevention or price. It is therefore vital that marketers identify each
benefit segment so as to snatch each of them with different marketing mix. As D&B has been
making use of benefit and user status segmentation, benefit sought and level of loyalty
status will be the main point of behavioral segmentation in the paper. The former segment
on which D&B focuses that consumers with different benefit sought will evaluate attributes
of products differently, which means a quality-seeker consumers will seek for getting the
highest quality expect for other benefits. In addition, D&B benefits from the online shopping
strategy in order to boost its sales, involving suggestions of products in shopping basket ‘you
may also like’, or ‘frequently bought together’. The latter segment on which D&B focuses
that consumers with different loyalty status. That’s why D&B offers a loyalty program, which
helps define customer loyalty by scoring them, and then according to the score which
customers have collected within a year D&B redeems scores for every lira spent, and
provides rewards and gifts such as summer vacation.