Market Segmentation in the Clothing Industry
When businesses are developing their strategies for branding, they are obligated to provide an answer to an important question, which is as follows: who are their consumers?
It is very difficult to create a marketing strategy that will offer value to your intended market if you cannot first recognize who it is that your product is speaking to.
When companies go through the process of segmentation, they realize that they can’t be everything to everybody. For businesses to achieve success and rise above the competition, they need to segment their audience and concentrate their efforts on market segments that are both appropriate and profitable. The process of segmentation is extremely difficult because it requires businesses to process a large volume of disparate information that relates to both external and internal factors of the company.
Businesses rely on a diverse set of requirements to create unique types and categorizations of users, who are required to fulfill the following requirements:
- Clearly defined and not intertwining
- Find a price that is comparable to that of the product that the company is selling.
- In line with the brand marketing mix that the company intends to pursue
On a different level, once the segments are identified, businesses are needed to comprehend the behavioral patterns that are related to a specific customer type. This understanding is necessary to tailor their products and services accordingly. To provide an answer to the second part of this question, we will investigate a novel marketing theory known as “Jobs to Be Done.”
Segmentation Based on Descriptive, Behavioral, and Psychographic Criteria
When it comes to segmenting an organization’s audience, the first and most direct approach we can take is to begin by creating user groups that are delineated by various descriptive criteria, such as the following:
Geographic Location
Customers have certain characteristics in common, which is a representation of the geographic and cultural area in which they live. This segmentation is based on the basic presumption that individual behavior and buying choices are affected by variables (such as environment and culture) that can be segmented depending on a person’s geographic area.
Socio-demographic
This criterion categorizes customers according to factors like income, maturity level, sex, family situation, and phase of the life cycle. Because of these factors, businesses need to tailor their product offerings to particular price points and brand utilizes to become enticing to a particular set of clients.
Age
When it comes to creating different types of customers, age is a very crucial component. Age is directly related to the experiences that a person had during the years that were crucial to the formation of their identity. Preteens, Millennials, Generation X, Baby Boomers, and new seniors make up our commonly recognized age groups right now.
The Characteristics of an Individual
Another strategy for segmentation is to decide not to concentrate so much on an individual’s characteristics as a person but rather on their characteristics as a consumer. In this particular scenario, we need to have a better understanding of the more behavioral elements. In those other words, we have to clarify not who he or she is but rather what it is about this product that appeals to him or her. This particular type of segmentation is a lot more difficult to carry out because it requires us to have an understanding of behavioral patterns and the relationships of causality.
Instead, Behavioral Segments Are Associated With the Following
User Status
Non-users, potential customers, routine users, and former users are the four types of users that can be distinguished. A business needs to employ various communicative strategies for each of these demographics to effectively “speak” to them. It is important to note that when we talk about “disruptive innovation,” we are referring to technological advances that have the potential to convert people who do not currently use a product or service into users.
Uses and Applications
The setting in which consumers may purchase a specific good or service due to a specific situation or in a unique situation or setting is the focus of this segmentation criterion. Specifically, this criterion looks at the circumstances under which customers may make a purchase. Certain companies may decide to concentrate their marketing efforts on establishing a connection between their wares and a specific application rather than highlighting a collection of the product’s distinguishing characteristics.
Loyalty to the Brand
Someone who has developed a strong emotional connection to the company and who, as a result, becomes a repeat customer by buying numerous times is considered to be a regular client. Because consumers who are dedicated to a brand have a high lifetime value, companies want to do everything they can to keep these customers as clients because they bring in a lot of revenue.
To effectively deliver a branding experience, one of the most important components is to have a solid understanding of behavior. This way of thinking is also supported by the Jobs to Be Done Theory, which is something that will be covered in the following section of this post.
Psychographic Segmentation
This segmentation is related to how a consumer’s choice of a product or service is a representation of the consumer’s inner concept of themselves. We can divide customers into the following categories based on how they respond to new things and different ways of doing things:
Innovators
Users who fall into this category will have an excellent reaction to novelty and alteration. They will be among the first to purchase something to get a head start, influence subsequent customers by offering feedback and reviews, and remain ahead of the curve.
Pioneers in the Field
Buyers who fall into this category will be among the first to follow a pattern as soon as it begins to take form. These early adopters will have the greatest impact on the success of a product because they will pave the way for widespread adoption. Individuals who might be able to fully acknowledge the effect of a new line of products are referred to as “lead users,” which describes this category of users. Another name for this group of users is “power users,” which describes this group of users. Companies frequently have a strong interest in learning more about the expectations of lead users as well as the feedback they provide to gain knowledge of how goods can be established.
The Majority Vote Always Wins
The individuals who are going to follow a trend as soon as it becomes adequately influential constitute the vast majority of the target audience. An item reaches its highest point of profitability with this group of customers, but it also begins its decline stage at this point.
Leggards
These customers will only adopt a product once it has reached such a level of popularity that the availability of the product will play a role in the process by which they make decisions. A supplemental psychographic segmentation can be used to respond to a customer’s spending capacity, based on the characteristics that are listed below:
Customers From Higher Socioeconomic Brackets
possess a sufficient amount of resources to make the price this is one of the factors they take into consideration when making a purchase decision. On the contrary, these customers have the propensity to be very conscious of the value of their own time, which means that providing excellent customer service is of the utmost significance.
Customers Who Are Focused on Value
Customers who fall into this category have the propensity to maximize the advantages of their purchases while retaining a lower cost threshold. These consumers will have a positive reaction to time-sensitive marketing strategies like promotions and sales, as well as any other tactic that appeals to their desire to get a good deal.
The Victims of Fashion
In this scenario, consumers spend money regardless of what level of spending they are truly capable of supporting. Customers who hold this perspective regard the items they purchase from fashion retailers as an extension of their own identities. As a result, they are more likely to be carried away by their feelings than by any extent of rational thought.
Because of the growing importance of consumer behavior, a new subfield of market analysis was developed to concentrate on the relationship between causality and the consumer’s propensity to buy goods and services. This subfield was created in response to the growing relevance of consumer behavior. This method is referred to as the “Jobs to Be Done” approach, and it will be discussed further in the subsequent section of this post.
The Theory of Getting Jobs Done
Work that needs to be done The marketing strategy of theory enables businesses to determine the factors that are directly causally connected to a consumer’s choice to make a purchase. This strategy was developed to provide businesses with the ability to not solely concentrate on descriptive aspects, but rather to delve more deeply into the motivating factors that drive customers to make purchases.
According to this strategy, brands must be able to establish themselves in the minds of consumers to be recalled to carry out a particular task, which necessitates the users’ purchase of an item or service that they want to get done.
Specific brands, such as IKEA, are very successfully placed on the market, not due to the specific features and characteristics of their product lines, but because they are viewed as the perfect means to fulfill certain jobs that consumers need to get done, such as equipping a student’s apartment.
Several of the descriptive components that are deduced from conventional segmentation techniques, based on this theory, lead only to the creation of ‘personas,’ which are customer types who would be the perfect customers for our company. This strategy may help elucidate the path we want our brand to take, but it won’t be able to unearth the factors that influence him or her to make a purchase—in other words, it won’t tell you what the Job to Be Done is.
Establishing Connections With a Company’s Target Market is a Product of Sharing and Co-creation
To some degree, in the process of determining who our consumers are and the reasons for which they purchase our products, we need to figure out what type of connection we should have with them. In the past, our customer relationship was significantly more orderly, which meant that while they could choose whether or not to purchase our products, they could not participate in the process by which value was created.
In recent times, due to the advancement of digitalization, the connection between businesses and their clients has now completely shifted, making the consumer an active participant in the method of both the conception and verification of a fashion brand. This can be accomplished through the use of a crowd-sourcing strategic plan, and a strategic marketing layout to create and make the community rally around a product to advise and create branding and advertising strategies for a product line.
Existing online systems have made it possible for organizations to engage their viewers in a very significant way. They have done this by forming new dynamic collaborations with their community and developing entirely new communications and marketing strategies based on fresh dimensions of ownership, such as those demonstrated by platforms for the sharing economy.
Companies are discovering that this reworked partnership with their target audience provides them with the opportunity to create innovative business models. These new models of operation prosper on the engagement of customers in a wide range of methods such as the design, creation, buying, and post-purchase experience of garments.