10/3 reflection

The main idea that I took away from this week's topic of audience segmentation was that one, single social marketing approach does not effectively serve the collective target audience. Basically, in planning a health program it is important to first know what types of segments or subgroups exist with the target population. Audience segmentation is one technique that can be used to identify common characteristics among subgroups in relation to a variety of variables including demographics, behavior, and psychographics. Initially when I first read the articles by Slater and Maibach, I compared segmentation to the idea of analyzing the segments based on the principles of the stages of change model. Yet, an additional layer of segmentation that can be helpful is learning what message and communication channel preferences exist among different subgroups for program planning purposes.

I was surprised to learn how zip code information obtained in retail stores is actually collected and used for the PRIZM market segmentation. I guess I never really thought about why cashiers at certain stores sometimes ask me for my zip code. I just thought it was so they could continue to send me coupons in mail. But now I know they were just trying to analyze my shopping behavior for segmentation purposes!

The target audience for our group project is students living on-campus. Therefore we can anticipate that the only variance in geographic information for this audience will be based on whether or not students live in a dorm room or on-campus apartment. But I think it will be interesting to learn about the different behaviors, attitudes and knowledge among this population of students. In addition it will be important to learn about channel and media preferences for nutrition information and whether or not these are being currently met by campus offices.