A comparison and classification of shopper strategy and activity pattern market segment solutions.

Abstract

Markets appear to be too similar to be grouped in any meaningful way. The findings appear to support the contention that a similar set of shopper types can be found across markets. This suggests that corporate profitability may be advanced by those firms which can develop programmed, carefully targeted marketing strategies that appeal to "basic" consumer segments which exist in every market.

The types of shoppers existing in each market are characterized. At times, seventeen different types of shoppers are found. However, the seven most common types of shoppers represent over seventy-eight percent of the respondents. Less than 7.7 percent of the shoppers are classified as one of the seven least commonly found types of shoppers.

The markets are found to be no more different from each other than are split-half samples of individuals within the same markets. This finding seems to suggest that differences in the research conceptual domain, types of shopping strategy and activity pattern shoppers, are insignificant across the geographical markets.

The types of shoppers which exist in each of seventeen different geographical markets are identified in terms of their responses to a common inventory of "shopping strategy and activity pattern" statements. The purpose of the dissertation is to: (1) determine the extent of similarity of the types of shoppers across the seventeen markets; and, (2) classify the markets with respect to the similarity of types of shoppers.