BEHAVIORAL SEGMENTATION

In behavioral segmentation, buyers are divided into groups on the basis of their knowledge of, attitude toward, use of, or response to a product. Many marketers believe that behavioral variables-occasions, benefits, user status, usage rate, loyalty status, buyer-readiness stage, and attitudeare the best starting points for constructing market segments.

Occasions
Buyers can be distinguished according to the occasions when they develop a need, purchase a product, or use a product. Occasions segmentation can help firms expand product usage. For example in Pakistan tea is usually consumed at breakfast. A company can consider occasions of critical life events or transitionsmarriage, childbirth, illness, relocation, career changeas giving rise to new needs.

Benefits
Buyers can be classified according to the benefits they seek, people vary considerably in the benefits they seek from the same product. 1.Road Warriors: premium products and quality service. (16%) 2.Generation F: fast fuel, fast service, and fast food. (27%) 3.True Blues: branded products and reliable service. (16%) 4.Home bodies: convenience. (21%) 5.Price Shoppers: Low price. (20%)

User Status
Markets can be segmented into nonuser, ex-users, potential users, first time users, and regular users of a product. Market-share leaders tend to focus on attracting potential users because they have the most to gain. Smaller firms focus on trying to attract current users away from the market leader.

Usage Rate
Markets can be segmented into light, medium, and heavy product users. Heavy users are often a small percentage of the market but account for high percentage of total consumption.

Loyalty Status
Consumers have varying degrees of loyalty to specific brands, stores, and companies. Buyers can be divided into four groups according to brand loyalty status: 1.Hard-core loyals: Consumers who are buy one brand all the time. 2.Split loyals: Consumers who are loyal to two or three brands. 3.Shifting loyals: Consumers who shift from one brand to another. 4.Switchers: Consumers who show no loyalty to any brand.

Buyer-readiness stage
A market consists of people in different stages of readiness to buy a product. Some are unaware of the product, some are aware, some are informed, some are interested, some desire the product, and some intend to buy. The relative numbers make a big difference in designing the marketing program.

Attitude
Five attitude groups can be found in a market: enthusiastic, positive, indifferent, negative, and hostile. Door-to-door workers in political campaign use the voters attitude to determine how much time to spend with that voter. They thank to enthusiastic voters and remind them to vote; they reinforce those who are positively disposed; they try to win the votes of indifferent voters; they spend no time trying to change the attitudes of negative and hostile voters.

CONCLUSION The tools for identifying market segments and selecting target markets all over the world is same and these tools are also implemented in Pakistan. Companies make different segments for their own convenience and target only those markets that in return gives the company most profit and that company can easily serve. Identifying market segments and selecting target markets enable the company to serve their customer in a better way. With marketers increasingly adopting more and more refined market segmentation schemes fueled by internet and other customization effortssome critics claim that massmarketing is dead .

80-20 rule
A rule of thumb that states that 80% of outcomes can be attributed to 20% of the causes for a given event. In business, the 80-20 rule is used to help managers identify problems and determine which operating factors are most important and should receive the most attention based on an efficient use of resources. Resources should be allocated to addressing the input factors have the most effect on a company's final results. Also known as the "Pareto principle", the "principle of factor sparsity" and the "law of the vital few."

Investopedia Says:
The 80-20 rule was developed by Joseph Juran, a 20th century figure in the study of management techniques and principles. The 80-20 rule has been applied to a number of different facets of business. An example of the 80-20 rule in economics would be that 80% of a country's wealth is controlled by 20% of the population, although this can be explained by the Gini index.

Usage rate

Usage rate segmentation involves 'dividing a market by the amount of product bought or consumed' (Summers et al. 2009, p. 142). Usage rate can be irregular (light), medium, or heavy, while user status for a product can range from regular user, first-time user, potential user, former-user, or non-user. Under the 80/20 principle, marketers prefer to focus more of their attention on heavy and regular users, however they are also interested in attracting non-users. Consider the marketing of beer. The focus of advertising for full strength beer is on heavy drinkers. However newer products, for example light beers and premium beers are targeted at non-traditional markets, such as younger people and females.

Loyalty status
When assessing loyalty, consumers can be classified as completely loyal, somewhat loyal, or not loyal. Completely loyal consumers are those that would not consider buying another brand or visiting a different outlet. I tend to be more loyal for service products, such as my hairdresser and my doctor, while I tend to be a brand switcher when it comes to most food products. Some consumers may be loyal to more than one brand. For example, I like both Arnotts and Nabisco biscuits and tend to buy whatever is on special for those two brands. Other consumers may show no brand loyalty at all and may simply buy whatever brands are on special.

Buyer-readiness stage
Buyer readiness stages range from being unaware that the product or service exists to actual purchase. The six buyer readiness stages are: Stage Awareness Knowledge Liking Preference Conviction Purchase Issues Is the consumer aware that the product exists? Do they know about your company and your brand? What does the consumer need to know about the product? Do they know what benefits the product provides? Do they know what attributes/features the product has? Do they know how much the product costs and where to buy it? Does the consumer like the product? What is their attitude towards the product? Do they feel that it would provide useful benefits? Does the consumer prefer your brand? Do they believe that your brand provides the right mix of attributes to deliver desired benefits? Is the consumer convinced that they should buy your brand? Are they convinced that your brand would meet their needs and is value for money? Have they moved from purchase intention to actually purchasing the product?