Sometimes it isn’t enough to broadly define your target consumer and you need to further narrow your focus. In this activity guide, you will review how you can divide (or “segment”) your target consumer population/target audience into smaller groups according to their specific needs, preferences and characteristics.
Doing this can help you allocate limited resources toward the specific groups within a target population for whom your interventions can achieve the greatest impact. Segmentation also allows you to better design or tailor programs to specific groups to improve the probability of those individuals responding to your program. Individuals will receive and respond differently to products, services and messages and according to their needs, values, where they are in the behavioral adoption stairway and their preferences for particular media or information channels. Segmentation recognizes these differences and attempts to group individuals together who will respond similarly to your interventions.
Also, note that it may be hard (and not necessary) to segment many players up the value chain if there are very few. For example, you don’t need to segment manufacturers or policymakers when there are only 3-5. This activity is likely to be more relevant for consumers or providers where we are dealing with larger populations.
