Market Segmentation

Market segmentation variables are elements that businesses use to target attractive
segments of the markets for coverage of their products. The most common variables are
geographic, psychographic, benefit and demographic (Green & Warren 2019). For example, in
the technological world, the developers of popular apps Tik Tok and Instagram use demographic
market segmentation targeting youthful people to market their apps. The developers then added
additional features of engagement that are still popular such as the like, comment, and share
functions (Ma et al., 2021). For this reason, both Tik Tok and Instagram have billions of users
worldwide.
Amazon uses demographic and psychographic market segmentation. Psychographic
market segmentation targets the psychological elements of customers that affect their purchase
behaviors. (Huang et al., 2019) finds that surveys on online lifestyles can more accurately predict
purchase behavior than other personality traits. For example, in the post by Amazon on Twitter
(https://twitter.com/amazon/status/1468671729459412997) on 09 th December 2021, twitter
suggests that in this holiday season, customers can purchase some items that they bought
previously by referring to their browsing history. Amazon uses demographic market
segmentation to target youthful customers and create opportunities for marketing innovation
(Green & Warren 2019). The majority of the global population is young people. Youthful people
also make up the most significant percentage of an online presence. Amazon has structured its
advertising strategy to appeal to the youthful generation, as seen on their Twitter account
(https://twitter.com/amazon/status/1466570435890458638) on 3 rd December 2021. Amazon can
use psychographic market segmentation to target the Rwandese market based on psychological
behavior and an audit on online footprint analysis (Tarabasz 2022). Rwanda is an ideal country

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to apply demographic market segmentation because it has a high population of young people in
relation to the entire population.

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References

Green, M. C., & Warren, J. (2019). Global Marketing (10th edition) [E-book]. Pearson.
Huang, Y., Liu, H., Li, W., Wang, Z., Hu, X., & Wang, W. (2019). Lifestyles in Amazon:
Evidence from online reviews enhanced recommender system. International Journal of
Market Research, 62(6), 689–706. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470785319844146
Ma, Y., & Hu, Y. (2021). Business Model Innovation and Experimentation in Transforming
Economies: ByteDance and TikTok. Management and Organization Review, 17(2),
382–388. https://doi.org/10.1017/mor.2020.69
Tarabasz, A. (2022). Be Like Amazon. Cases on Digital Strategies and Management Issues in
Modern Organizations, 23–50. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-1630-0.ch002