A big segmentation

The problem

Our client, a large music and media company, wanted to understand how it could grow its brand and business to become more resilient in the face of emerging competitors and interactive technologies.

This client needed to understand who their current customer was—and who else they might have the best strategic chance of attracting to grow their business.

The solution? A segmentation.

The process

After completing digital ethnographies and IDIs (in-depth interviews) to inform our basic, personal understanding of audio users today, we set out to craft the screener and survey that would allow us to collect the right data for the segmentation.

We conducted a quantitative survey of over 10,000 respondents. We then conducted segmentation analysis, and defined primary and secondary listener audiences to target based on key attributes including attributes and behaviors, backed with deep, detailed profiles to use as a basis for strategic planning, including brand experience, product, channel, and marketing strategy.

After writing and deploying the screener and the survey, we received data back. We then analyzed that data using an Excel crosstab workbook to check for quality and to begin synthesizing topline results. We then began our exploratory segmentation, identifying clusters of respondents that group together based on similar needs, motivations, behaviors, attitudes, psychographics, and circumstances. We then used Latent Gold software to run dimension-level models and ensemble models so we could identify possible clusters. We arrived at a solution with the number of classes we deemed optimal from a scientific (i.e., using the Bayesian Information criterion) and strategic (i.e., aligning with a picture of the audio consumers that made sense based on the qualitative research we’d completed) perspective.

The result: The solution we arrived at was deeply backed in quantitative data and rang true with the qualitative data we had gathered earlier in our process—and set out a clear strategic go-forward picture for our client. They’ve continued to use this segmentation as the basis for their brand strategy and business growth planning.

My contribution: I assisted our head data scientist throughout this process, taking on a learn-on-the-job role. After brief training, I ran about half of the dimension-level and ensemble solutions myself, independently, and contributed that work to our ultimate solution. I learned a lot throughout this process, drawing on the work I did as an undergraduate (in particular, running quantitative analysis, including principal component analysis, on a dataset from a survey of just over 600 participants). I also helped lead the team when it came to applying our qualitative insights to our understanding of our ultimate quantitative solution, ensuring that each segment aligned recognizably with a plausible human consumer. I played a key role in pulling the right data onto slides to help our clients understand each segment. I weighed in when it came to the strategic selection of core, primary growth, and secondary growth segments to target. I helped to tell the stories around each of our segments.

Reflection: Starting with the purely qualitative digital ethnographies not only helped to inform the questions we asked in the segmentation (tendencies to listen alone or listen with others, for example)—but also helped us to recognize the meaningful patterns and real people in the data that came back. I loved learning so much during this process—while I prefer qualitative research over quantitative research, this experience confirmed for me that (1) quantitative data can be a powerful storytelling tool, complementary to qualitative data, that can particularly help to persuade people to pay attention, and (2) that I’m a quick learner when it comes to picking up new quantitative skills! This experience also reinforced the lesson that it is so important to design with your target customer in mind—this entire process formed a rich, powerful foundation for this brand to go forth in their brand experience, product, channel, and marketing strategy and design.