Mkt Segmentation Guide #12

Good segmentation produces segments that are homogeneous within and heterogeneous between.

This is an often repeated marketing guide.  It is sometimes misunderstood to mean that all of the members of a given segment will share similar demographic characteristics.  Remember that differing wants/needs define segments.  The members of a given segment should have the same wants/needs (to be homogeneous) and those wants/needs should differ (to be heterogeneous) from the wants/needs of members of other segments. 

If the market for dance lessons were segmented, a hypothesis would be that a high potential market segment would be comprised of people with higher social needs.  People with high social needs carry those needs with them throughout their lives, and those needs are relatively independent of economic status.  Thus, the members of the high potential market segment probably have very differing demographics.

As an example and presented as a cluster set space to the right, the fact that consumers are contained in one of the clusters indicates homogeneous wants/needs.  The lack of overlap among the clusters indicates the consumers in a given cluster have wants/needs that are different, or heterogeneous, from the wants/needs of consumers in other clusters.