The Many Sides of Me

Riddle:  How can one person be many people at the same time?

Answer: When they fall into different segments for different companies

I am a single person (although my daughter claims I have multiple personalities!).  Yet I am not the same person to all the companies I patronize.

To my One Hour Martinizing drycleaner, I am a Best Customer — I spend 100% of my drycleaning money with them on a frequency of every two weeks.  I am also an evangelist for them, making me a special customer indeed.

To Barnes & Noble, I am a frequent customer, but not a best one.  The largest share of my spending goes to Amazon, since I have a Kindle and am addicted to instant gratification.  By the way, I am an evangelist for the Kindle too, but that is another story.

To Punch Pizza, I am not even a best customer.  I don’t eat that much pizza and the bulk of my pizza money actually goes to frozen pizza we eat at home (I know, I am boring).  Besides, pizza dinners compete for me with all sorts of casual dining experiences, a far broader choice set.  In that set, I spend even a lower share on local pizza.

What is the point of this exercise?

If you look at my demographics — age, income, family size, education, neighborhood — I would look like the same person to every store.  But if you use the transactional data — my frequency, dollar amount, product mix, and combine that information with share of wallet (the percent of my spending going to that store), you see a very different picture.

That different picture is why segmentation begins with behavior.  Behavior is what we need to understand, since behavior is what we, as marketers, want to influence, by building stronger relationships and brand affinity.

We are many people, all wrapped up into 1.  If you want me to hear you, speak to who I am to your company.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Will the Kindle kill the book biz? Not likely (dailyfinance.com)
• Comparison shop for eBooks quickly and easily! (geardiary.com)

Tweet

Tagged as: Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, behavioral marketing, Database marketing, segmentation, share of wallet