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 segmentatio n definition and then to test whether any differences that are observed are statistically significant.

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