Week 7 Reading Reflection

1) What was the biggest surprise for you in the reading? In other words, what did you read that stood out the most as different from your expectations? 

The biggest surprise would be that we haven't switched to this type of market segmentation yet. As noted in the article, the current segmentation initiatives have failed and will continue to do so until marketers address the product features that matter most to the customer. 

2) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you?

In the article, it says that effective segmentation focuses on just one or two issues, and they would soon become obsolete after having their relevancy lost. I'm curious to know how long should the effective segmentation stay in place. This sounds like a costly and repetitive method, in which the business would have to constantly monitor changing customers' values and perceptions. In my opinion, public opinion sways from left to right too frequently in order to proceed on product development. This would be a drawback to psycho-graphic profiling.

3) If you were able to ask two questions to the author, what would you ask? Why?

Should a multi-national company like Pepsi or Coca-Cola switch to a marketing segmentation approach that focuses on rediscovering market segmentation? Pepsi still uses the same basic marketing campaign to make consumers believe that they will be happy if they drink one of their products. 

Do you ever envision businesses actually putting aside their current market segmentation approaches?

4) Was there anything you think the author was wrong about? Where do you disagree with what she or he said? How?

I'm not entirely sold on the idea of psychographic profling because it's a very time consuming and costly method to assess what consumers want. In my opinion, most consumers don't know what they want until they actually give the product a chance. Better yet, they tend to use past purchases to influence their purchases. In the end, I am more intrigued about Yankelovich and Meer's market segmentation .