Hybrid segmentation as pursued by international supermarkets to segment customers : Ireland and China compared
Authors
Xue, Tong Xiang
Issue Date
2008
Degree
MSc in International Business
Publisher
Dublin Business School
Rights holder
Rights
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Abstract
Globalization brings massive opportunities to international enterprises to operate and expand their businesses in international markets. Consumer segmentation strategy is one of the most widely used marketing strategies to assist international enterprises to identify and analyze existing and potential consumers. Due to the fact, consumers from different background have various buying behaviors and distinct opinions on the product sought, that creates a lot of difficulties for international enterprises when they conduct single component of consumer segmentation to segment consumers internationally. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate why hybrid consumer segmentation is the most appropriate segmentation strategy pursued by international enterprises (supermarkets). This research study is based on detailed theoretical literature of consumer segmentation and hybrid segmentation. The international supermarket is selected as the sample industry, and the researcher has used a case study to show how hybrid segmentation helps the international supermarket to identify and segment consumers’ profiles. In other words the case study supports the secondary data by using a real life example.