A Simultaneous Approach to Market Segmentation and Market Structuring

The authors define a market segment to be a group of consumers homogeneous in terms of the probabilities of choosing the different brands in a product class. Because the vector of choice probabilities is homogeneous within segments and heterogeneous across segments, each segment is characterized by its corresponding group of brands with “large” choice probabilities. The competitive market structure is determined as the possibly overlapping groups of brands corresponding to the different segments. The use of brand choice probabilities as the basis for segmentation leads to market structuring and market segmentation becoming reverse sides of the same analysis. Using panel data, the authors obtain the matrix of cross-classification of brands chosen on two purchase occasions and extract segments by using the maximum likelihood method for estimating latent class models. An application to the instant coffee market indicates that the proposed approach has substantial validity and suggests the presence of submarkets related to product attributes as well as to brand names.