Psychological Base Is Another Way Marketers Use to Segment a Market. List and Fully Explain Five Ways in Which You Can Use This Base to Segment a Market:

Psychological base is another way marketers use to segment a market. List and fully explain five ways in which you can use this base to segment a market:

Introduction

Market segmentation is the dividing of a market into distinct subsets of customers with similar needs and wants, each of which can be reached with a different marketing mix (Michael, 2001). The advantages of segmentation to a company is that the marketing mix can be tailored to meet the needs and wants of customers precisely which helps decision makers better allocate scarce resources and build long term relationships with customers. There are five methods with which marketers segment the market namely; geographic, demographic, psychographic, benefits sought, and usage.

Psychological Base of Segmentation

The psychological base falls under the psychographic method of segmentation and it involves the use of individual determinants of consumer behaviour. These are the intrinsic qualities of the individual behaviour; personality, motivation, learning, perceptions, and attitudes.

a) Personality

Personality may be defined as inner psychological characteristics that both determine and reflect how a person responds to his/her environment (Segui, 2010). Inner characteristic are the distinguishing characteristics of an individual which may include mannerisms, traits and attributes. Some marketers believe that personality influences the types and brands of products purchased. For example, the type of car, clothes or jewellery a consumer buys may reflect one or more personality traits. Personality traits such as autonomy, aggressiveness, dominance, sociability, and self- confidence may be used to describe a person's personality.

Self- Concept

Self- concept is how consumers perceive themselves. Although self- concept may change, the change is often gradual. Through self- concept, people define their identity which in turn provides for consistent and coherent behaviour. Self- concept combines the ideal self- image- the way the individual would like to be, and the real self- image- how an individual actually perceive themselves. According to Segui (2010), "We generally try to raise our real self- image towards our ideal self- image- or at least narrow the gap". Consumers seldom buy products that jeopardise their self- image. For example, a person who sees themself as a trend setter will not buy clothing such as a traditional safari suit that does not project a contemporary image.

An important component of self- concept is body image- the perception of the attractiveness of one's own physical features. By influencing the degree to which consumers perceive goods to be self- relevant, marketers can affect consumers' to stay loyal to a certain brand. People adopt a lifestyle that reflects their personality and self- concept and people with different lifestyles buy different products at different shops.

b) Motivation

This is the driving force within individuals that impels them to action (Michael, 2001: 100). Driving force towards some object or condition is positive motivation. Driving force away from some object or condition is negative motivation. Some psychologists refer to positive drives as needs, wants or desires. Negative drives as fears or aversions. "Even though the positive and negative drives seem to differ dramatically in terms of physical and sometimes emotional activity, they are similar in that they both serve to initiate and sustain human behaviour", (Segui, 2010).

By studying motivation, marketers can analyse the major forces influencing consumers to buy or not to buy a product. According to Lamb et al, when you buy a product you do so to satisfy some kind of need and these needs become motives when aroused sufficiently (2006:84). Motives are the driving forces that cause a person to take action to satisfy specific needs. Maslow's hierarchy of needs has been used to explain why people are driven by particular needs at particular times. Under this theory, needs are arranged in ascending order; physiological, safety, social, esteem, and self actualization.

Different firms appeal to different needs that motivate people. For example, Purity advertises bits baby food with the slogan "No Preservatives", which appeals to mother's safety needs. Many advertisements are based on a sexual appeal, an example of a physiological need. For example a lot of them feature semi naked pretty women, who have sexual appeal, to motivate buying.

c) Learning

All consumer behaviour results from learning, which is the process that creates changes in behaviour through experience