Question

This week’s readings present some very unique frameworks for segmenting your potential market. The assigned reading in the text, video and articles provided include traditional as well as non-traditional ways to segment the dining public.

1. Fill your own demographic information into the traditional categories listed in the article.

• Age

• Income levels

• Education and job types

• Marital status

• Size of household

• Housing and renting prices

2. Determine the psychographics associated with your own demographics. Do the preferences associated with certain demographic groups match up with your preferences and your demographic groups?

3. Review the list of Eater Archetypes in the Technomic articles. Which one best describes you? Are the preferences associated with your Eater Archetype the same as your preferences?

4. What does the accuracy of these two frameworks say about the usefulness of this type of analysis? What does it say about the limitations? In your opinion, which is a more useful framework?

Answer 1

1.1. Consumers who actively search for better broadband deals may benefit from lower prices or improved service quality compared to those who do not. If, however, consumers differ in their propensity to engage with the market and actively search, these potential benefits may not accrue equally. This paper investigates differences in consumer search activity for telecommunications services across small geographic areas. We exploit rich and novel data from a commercial price comparison site to explore the dispersion of consumer search in the Irish retail broadband market, while controlling for supply-side variations. By linking geo-coded searches to census data on small area socio-economic characteristics, we identify the areas where most search originates and can thus characterise the socio-economic groups to whom the benefits of search are most likely to accrue. We find evidence that areas populated by many highly educated, married people, commuters, mortgage holders, and retirees are among the most active in search. In contrast, those areas in which many older people, farmers, low-skilled workers and students reside give rise to significantly fewer consumer searches.