Segmentation
Segmentation is essentially the identification of subsets of buyers within a market who share similar needs and who demonstrate similar buyer behavior. The world is made up from billions of buyers with their own sets of needs and behavior. Segmentation aims to match groups of purchasers with the same set of needs and buyer behavior. Such a group is known as a 'segment'. Think of you r market as an orange, with a series of connected but distinctive segments, each with their own profile. Of course you can segment by all sorts of variables. The diagram above depicts how segmentation information is often represented as a pie chart diagram - the segments are often named and/ or numbered in some way.
Segmentation is a form of …show more content…

It is used by vendors to sell their products, and promoted by website and intranet managers as a way of delivering a brave new era of functionality.
Separate from debates regarding the merits and approaches to personalisation, there is considerable confusion about the meaning of the word itself.
As the use of personalisation spreads, this confusion has grown. Personalisation is now routinely used for everything from ‘my links’ functionality, to fine-grained targeting of information to specific staff roles.
The absence of consistent terminology in this space is now causing considerable difficulty for purchasers of technology, and organisations in general. Without a clear understanding of what is meant, it is often difficult to assess the value of products, and even harder to measure the success of personalisation features.
At the risk of introducing still more terminology into this fragmented marketplace, this briefing will draw a clear line between two separate functionalities:
• Personalisation, whereby individual users can