Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
Number Profile Name
19 Home Sweet Home
24 Up-and-Comers
13 Upward Bound
34 White Picket Fences
The tourism bureau for the state of Michigan was able to identify different customer profiles and target
them using PRIZM. Michigan’s biggest travel segment are Chicagoans in certain zip codes consisting of
upper-middle-class households with children—or the “kids in cul-de-sacs” group, as Claritas puts it. The
bureau was also able to identify segments significantly different from the Chicago segment, including
blue-collar adults in the Cleveland area who vacation without their children. The organization then
created significantly different marketing campaigns to appeal to each group.
City size and population density (the number of people per square mile) are also used for segmentation
purposes. Have you ever noticed that in rural towns, McDonald’s restaurants are hard to find? But Dairy
Queens are usually easy to locate. McDonald’s generally won’t put a store in a town of fewer than five
thousand people. However, this is prime turf for the “DQ”—for one, because it doesn’t have to compete
with bigger franchises like McDonald’s.
Proximity marketing is an interesting new technology firms are using to segment buyers
geographically and target them within a few hundred feet of their businesses using wireless technology. In
some areas, you can switch your mobile phone to a “discoverable mode,” while you’re shopping and, if you
want, get ads and deals from stores as you pass by them. And it’s often less expensive than hiring people
to hand you a flier as you walk by. [13]
Audio Clip
Interview with Apurva Ghelani
http://app.wistia.com/embed/medias/d0b89776be