Market Segmentation: Market segmentation is defined as a framework by which to sub-divide a larger heterogeneous market into smaller, more homogeneous parts. These segments can be defined in many different ways: demographic (men vs. women, young vs. old, or richer vs. poorer), behavioral (those who buy on the phone vs. the internet vs. retail, or those who pay with cash vs. credit cards), or attitudinal (those who believe that store brands are just as good as national brands vs. those who don’t). There are many analytical techniques used to identify segments such as cluster analysis, factor analysis, or discriminate analysis. But the most common method is simply to hypothesize a potential segmentation definition and then to test whether any differences that are observed are statistically significant (See Chapter 13 of The PDMA HandBook 2nd Edition).
市场细分:市场细分被理解为一个框架，这个框架能将较大的不同种类的市场细分为许多较小的同类市场。划分方式有很多:按人口统计划分方法(男与女，老与少，或贫与富)，按行为划分方法(电话订购与网购、零售，现金支付与信用卡支付)，或者按态度划分方法(认为商店品牌可媲美国有品牌和与之相反的态度)。同时，有诸多识别细分市场的分析工具，例如集群分析法、因素分析法或者差异分析法。但是，最普遍也最简单的方法是提出潜在细分市场的定义，然后测试是否具有统计学上的意义。
