Abstract:

Benefit Segmentation is a very popular tool in practical market delineation and promotional opportunity studies. This paper reports the results of a managerially oriented benefit segmentation study done in a midwestern United States bank market. Using standard attitudinal importance measures, ordinary cluster analytic methods were used to devise benefit segments. These were cross validated for behavioral market differences and checked for predictive validity by usual linear discriminant procedures. The replication study done two years later revealed several subtle market shifts with interesting promotional and "positioning" implications. Very often extremely profitable, and cost saving, strategies exist which can keep copy constant but shift media vehicles or change copy and continue in the same media vehicles (earning substantial discounts). This paper alerts service organizations to these opportunities and the possible pitfalls of "static" positioning.