We've been on the receiving end of such a market segmentation request in our careers as market research managers. So we built this site to provide market researchers and managers with market research responsibilities with a practical guide to, and discussion of, segmentation as Marketing Managers and Senior Management might request and need.

We suggest you start with the Definition page, for the term can mean different types of market research or analysis to different managers. On the Definition page, we discuss these types to better provide you with the kind of information you need. Click on the Definition button to the left for a full discussion.

While market researchers tend to think of a specific process to categorize customers and/or target customers, the term itself is often used to describe what market researchers call descriptive statistics about customers and/or target customers.

The difference is simple.

Market segmentation:

--as a process seeks to define customer/target customer groups that share common thoughts and/or feelings (psychographic) or common behaviors (product or service usage patterns based on how, where and/or in what circumstances they use).

--as customer/target customer descriptions seeks to define groups by demographic variables such as age, education, income, employment status, and/or marital status.

We encourage to you to visit our Ask Dr. Bob page, where we answer your questions.

And we'd love to hear your stories and experience.

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Enjoy, and we look forward to hearing from you!