Week 7 Reading Reflection

Hello again everyone!

Today's reading reflection is from Yankelovich & Meer's Rediscovering Market Segmentation! Enjoy!

The most surprising aspect of this week's reading was about the psychographics of the marketplace. Before reading Y&M, I didn't even know what psychographics were! It's amazing how much detail and research was-- and still is-- put into every step of the marketing procedure-- and the intense research that occurs when a marketing campaign fails to do its job.

Y&M did a fantastic job at keeping the language of the article clear and concise. Other than having to look up a word or two, it was not a confusing read. I agreed with both authors throughout the work, and I think that they did a great job explaining market segmentation in 10 pages!

If I had to ask the authors Yankelovich and Meer two questions, they would be the following:
1) Why do you think that so many marketers used to, and still, focus so much on using psychographics to determine what to market to their customers? I feel like sometimes marketers fail to see what their customers really want to see when they focus too much on the general lifestyles and attitudes. Sometimes customers just want something new! Are psychographics simply something that is/was easy to fall back on?

2) When in doubt, is traditional segmentation something that is good to look at for general ideas of trends? I wonder this because I do not think it is possible to completely forgo traditional psychographics and segmentation-- it might still have uses, and I would like to hear what the authors think about this idea.

And that's it, folks! See you later!