Customer Segmentation by Self-Construct

A friend of mine is going to launch an Italian jewelry brand to China market and we have a chat about how to define target customers recently. He has a top selling model with a very unique design of infant nipple specially for pregnant women.  This is the way he defines the target customers:

Young and trendy expectant moms between the ages of 25 and 35, probably well-educated, middle class working white collars.

Does this definition help him find out where his customers are?

Marketers define their customers by the help of consumer research or historical sales data. Thanks to big-data technologies, marketers now can gain deeper insights into real-time consumer buying behavior and define audiences in very detailed variables. In general, there are four major dimensions for market segmentation:

• Geographic: nations, states, regions, countries, cities, climate, population density (urban, suburban, rural), neighborhoods;
• Demographic: age, life-cycle stage, gender, income, occupation, education, religion, ethnicity, generation;
• Psychographic: attitude, values, social class, lifestyle, personality;
• Behavioral: benefits, interests or hobbies, occasions, user status, loyalty status, usage behavior for e-commerce, web and mobile phone.

The below is how facebook defines its target audiences: demographics, interests, behaviors and more.

Do you think the more detailed customer definition will help you find the target customers more accurately? In fact, the more labels you add, the less likely you can pinpoint your target customers.

The Buyer’s Black Box Model

Indeed, customers often don’t know or even can’t describe why they act.

Psychologist Sigmund Freud said that people are largely unconscious about the real psychological forces shaping their behavior - their buying decisions are affected by subconscious motives that even the buyers may not fully understand.

We therefore call it a Buyer’s Black Box.

Learning about the whys of consumer buying behavior is not that easy.  The answers are often locked deeply within the consumer’ mind.

And you know what’s even worse?

Do you always behave as who you truly are? Have you ever contradicted yourself?

In fact, researches find out that people in nature have multiple selves, which sometimes contradict each other. 

People always behave quite differently in different social roles (such as parent, staff, or friend) or in different situations (at home, at office, on a date). It’s common to hear a story like, “she turns out to be another person in front of others”.

Inside this black box, people contain multitudes.  People will select the appropriate self for the situation at hand, so-called the malleable self.

Marketers thereby can use 4Ps as the stimuli to create certain situational cues that activate or shift the selves inside consumers’ mind, which then influence consumer buying behavior.

In other words, customers can be primed to do what we want.

For example:

People who are primed to think about family and kids will be more likely to take a financial risk rather than a social risk, such as buying an insurance.

In my previous article “How To Get The Best Out Of Your Influencer Marketing”, we also discussed how influencers use “priming” to change the followers’ behavior.

Self-Construct Priming on Consumer Behavior

There are two different self-constructs that shape consumer’s behavior – independent self and interdependent self.

Self-construct is the way how people view the self in relations to others and social environment.

“I” Type: an independent self-construct emphasizes on the self and realizes one’s own needs and wants.  For independent, making a decision for the self is a personal matter that helps fulfill one’s own goals and needs.

“We” Type: an interdependent self-construct emphasizes one’s connections to others and social embeddedness.  For interdependent, even making a decision for the self would still be perceived as being related to other people and more than just a personal matter.

Here is a quiz for you:

“If you are going to promote an orange juice with two different positioning by using influencers. Which influencers should you choose?”

The answer is: you should use Influencer L to promote “Healthy Juice” while Influencer P to promote “Refreshing Juice”.

When we choose an influencer, we actually choose his/her followers with similar characteristics primed by the influencers.

“I” Follow My Heart and “We” Rely on Reasons

Customers primed on independent self are more inclined to rely on affective feeling to choose a product, such as refreshing juice.

Influencer P: shares funny video blogs in her unique style – which primes her followers to be more independent “I”. It would be more effective to sell perceptual products, such as luxury consumer goods, clothing, tourism, etc.

Consumer primed on interdependent self are more likely to rely on cognitive reasoning in their decision making, such as healthy juice. 

Influencer L: shares knowledge and emphasizes life learning together – which primes his followers to be more interdependent “We”.  It would be more effective to sell rational products, such as books, healthy foods, training courses, etc.

Customers Are Not Who You Think They Are

Traditionally, marketers use demographics to define customers. We won’t target financial analysts for Abercrombie & Fitch, nor creative designers for Marks & Spencer. 

We intuitively believe that people can be defined or labelled by certain variables. We perceive financial analysts as serious and mature middle-aged men who should think and purchase more rationally, while creative designers as spiritual and rebellious youngsters who should think and purchase more emotionally.

Indeed, customers are not “who you think they are” but “who they are now”. 

No one is forever “pessimistic” or “optimistic”, only who is sad and who is happy now.

Don’t just look at your target customers by simple demographic or geographic definitions. We can segment our customers by self-construct evolved at different touch points. Further still, we can use self-construct priming to influence the customers’ black box to what we want.

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Reference:

• Jiewen Hong and Hannah H. Chang, “I Follow My Heart and We Rely on Reasons: The Impact of Self-Construal on Reliance on Feelings versus Reasons in Decision Making”, Journal of Consumer Research
• Naomi Mandel, “Shifting Selves and Decision Making: The Effects of Self-Construal Priming on Consumer Risk Taking”, Journal of Consumer Research
• Aaker, Jennifer L., “The Malleable Self: The Role of Self Expression in Persuasion” Journal of Marketing Research