Individualized Segmentation Essay: Analysis of Marketing Strategies

This essay delves into the concept of individualized segmentation, contrasting it with mass marketing and highlighting its prominence in e-commerce, with examples from companies like Amazon and Walmart. It emphasizes the importance of understanding customer behavior and preferences to tailor marketing efforts effectively. The essay discusses the advantages of individualized segmentation, such as improved customer retention and targeted marketing, while also acknowledging the challenges, including privacy concerns related to data collection and potential limitations in market reach. It references key academic sources to support the analysis, providing a comprehensive overview of the topic and its implications for modern marketing strategies. The essay explores the benefits of focusing on individual needs and preferences, as well as the potential drawbacks associated with personalized marketing approaches.

Running Head: Individualised Segmentation
Individualised Segmentation
Essay
System04104
8/9/2018

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Individualised Segmentation
In the era of mass marketing tactics, the assumption that every customer will be interested in
purchasing what you are selling is an expensive, ineffective and inefficient and time-
consuming approach. The individualised or personalized segmentation is practised by various
online e-commerce companies like Amazon, Wal-Mart, Alibaba, etc. all attract buyers by
focusing on their individual behaviour and pattern of likes and shows them what they have
seen or purchased earlier through their online sites. Although the modern technology helps in
dividing the mass customer base into very small segments and easily target the most relevant
people for buying their products. If the company can identify the key motivating factors for
their customers and setting price accordingly, it can help in branding the products properly.
The individualised segmentation also helps in customer retention by taking care of their
individual needs and demands (Onwezen, 2018).
(Source: Marketing.91, 2018)
Individual segmentation is generally not an easy approach for everyone rather it becomes
easy because of technological advancement where the seller can easily track the behaviour
and buying-pattern of a customer. But it is almost impossible to look after each individual if
the company doing its business on a large scale. The main problem with personalised
segmentation is using second party data and information of an individual which is the breach
of privacy of a person that what he/she is doing some other place or site (Schneider, et. al,
2017). It somehow limits the performance of a company and also limits the choice of a
customer rather exploring it and fails to make an impact on the general market (Landmark
and Sjøbakk, 2017). The customer only focuses on those products which are available for

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them at the first site. It also increases the cost expense of the brands because it focuses on a
single item for a single customer.

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References
Onwezen, M. (2018) Including Context in Consumer Segmentation: A Literature Overview
Shows the What, Why, and How. In Methods in Consumer Research, 1, pp. 383-400.
Landmark, A.D. and Sjøbakk, B. (2017) Tracking customer behaviour in fashion retail using
RFID. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 45(7-8), pp. 844-858.
Marketing.91 (2018) Individual-marketing [online]. Available from:
https://www.marketing91.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Individual-marketing.jpg
[Accessed: 09/08/2018].
Schneider, M.J., Jagpal, S., Gupta, S., Li, S. and Yu, Y. (2017) Protecting customer privacy
when marketing with second-party data. International Journal of Research in
Marketing, 34(3), pp. 593-603.