Market segmentation for competitive brands.

This article focuses on brand segmentation with a special emphasis on how far directly competing brands differ in the kind of customers they have. An extensive analysis of consumer panel data has therefore been carried out across more than 20 product categories in four countries, to establish the extent to which brand segmentation occurs. Perhaps surprisingly, given the vast segmentation literature, there have been no systematic studies of such brand segmentation. The demographic and lifestyle classifications which were available with such data, and which are almost universally used in panel analyses, and in almost all other media and market surveys were used. The hypothesis of this article is therefore that a systematic study will find little brand segmentation. This follows from the apparent lack of positive evidence in the literature and from the experience of the authors of many markets and research reports over the years. The article describes the consumer panel data available for this study, illustrates the form of analysis (by brand profiles), and summarizes main results as exceptions.