ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces a technique called 'customer profiling', which uses a laddering procedure to describe a very specific member of a target subsegment in detail. The assumption is that the insights obtained from describing and analyzing this individual can frequently be generalized across a broader segment. It is quick, inexpensive, and easily interpretable. Customer profiling is useful for generating hypotheses about customers that can be further examined in focus groups with questionnaires. It can also, however, be an effective starting point for developing a marketing communication program. After the customer profiling technique is describes, the author test how effectively managers can use it by determining how accurately they can predict which of 261 adults are most likely to be members of a public radio station. The accuracy of these predictions is then contrasted with the accuracy of predictions generated from conventional segmentation methods. This chapter discusses these results, and describes the additional applications of this robust technique.
