Market segmentation divides the total tourism market into meaningful groups based on characteristics like geography, demographics, psychographics, and behavior in order to better understand customer needs and effectively target specific segments. The key objectives of segmentation are to allow businesses to communicate with and provide customized products or services to distinct customer groups, as it would be too costly to satisfy every individual need. Common bases for segmentation include geographic variables like country or region, as well as demographic factors such as age, gender, income, and lifestyle characteristics.

1. UNIT-1 LECTURE 10
SEGMENTATION
Tourism market segmentation is the strategic tool for getting a clear picture of diversity among the tourists.
Market segmentation is the process to assemblage customers with shared desires or needs or wants
together. It is based on identification of customers or buyers on the basis of their different needs. So,
with the use of market segmentation, a business can split its market into different types of groups (with
similar needs) to enable it to better serve its target or relevant customers, which is usually one or few
segments only out of total market.
Market segmentation is dividing the total consumer market into groups to be able to communicate with them and
provide their specific needs. Every tourist being different, the tourism industry possibly is not capable of satisfying
every individual’s need. This is the foundation of segmenting the total market.
DEFINITION
 Market segmentation is the process of dividing the total market into meaningful homogenous groups.
 Dividing the total consumer market into groups to be able to communicate with them and provide their
specific needs.
OBJECTIVES/NEED FOR SEGMENTATION
 A market comprises of different types of customers.
 These customers can vary based on their location or attitude or buying habits or may be resources etc.
 It would be extremely costly for most of the businesses to serve all their customers with different
customized products.
 So, any company would try to find out the broad set of customers who share some unique purchase
pattern or any other kind of similarities.
ADVANATAGES OF SEGMENTATION
Market segmentation provides benefits as given below:
It helps to understand specific demands of the consumers.
It helps to allocate marketing expenses efficiently.
It helps to create effective marketing strategies to target specific market segment.
CHARECTERISTICS OF A SEGMENT
 Measurable
 Accessible
 Sustainable

2.  Actionable
 Desirable
TYPES OF SEGMENTATION
The tourism market segmentation can be broadly divided into the following types:
Geographic
Geographic market segmentation is done considering the factors such as tourists’ place of origin.
This factor is important as the tourists belonging to different places are brought up with different
cultures and show different traits of behavior. Whenever a business divides or segments its
market based on geography, it is called geographic segmentation. There are lot of ways in which
consumer market can be geographically segmented. The common variables that can be used to
segment the market geographically are country or region etc. Example:
 Density: Urban, Sub-urban, Rural ,City
 Size: Under 50,000, 50,000 – 2,00,000, More than 2, 00,000 etc.
 Region of a country: North India, East India, South India, West India or Central India
Demographic
Demographic segmentation comprises of distributing the market into clusters based on
demographic variables. These demographic variables could be life cycle stage, gender, age,
occupation, education, income, marital status etc. Demographic segmentation is also often used
as it can be used in collaboration with other segmentation bases like that of psychographic or
behavioral segmentation.
 Age: Under 5 years, 5-10 years, 10-20 years, 20-30 years etc.
 Gender :Male, Female
 Education Matriculation, Senior secondary, graduation, post-graduation
 Religion Hindu. Muslim, Sikh, Christian etc.
 Nationality Indian, Chinese, Japanese, British etc
Psychographic
The marketing people do this segmentation by taking into account the psyche of the tourists.
They gather information about the tourists’ interests, attitudes, their way of living life, opinions,
and overall personality. Psychographic segmentation classifies customers based on their
personality, lifestyle, attitudes and interests. It uses psychological characteristics of consumers as
bases to segment the market into meaning groups that are beneficial to the company. This
segmentation helps a company to select people depending upon how they think and the kind of
lifestyle they follow.
Behavioural Segmentation
Consumer market is divided into sub groups depending upon knowledge or use or response to a product or service in
case of behavioral segmentation. Consumer market is divided into sub groups depending upon
knowledge or use or response to a product or service in case of behavioral segmentation. It can
be done on the basis of User Status, Benefits, Loyalty status and on the basis of Occasions.
 Example:
Usage rate: Heavy users, medium user and light user
Occasion: Special occasion or regular occasion Loyalty Status Strong, none
Benefit Good quality, quick service, user convenience etc