ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a longitudinal and multi-epistemological analysis of market segmentation, a foundational concept for marketing theory and practice, that helps perform a company’s market orientation. Marketing and consumer behavior theory identify six main premises grounding segmentation. Virtually all articles and textbooks acknowledge agglomerated preferences as the foundational premise to market segmentation. A processual approach to market segmentation implies two distinct aspects: the phases articulating the segmentation process, and the possible iterations of said process, which allow for improvement of the granularity of market segmentation over time. Hypersegmentation, hypertargeting, and personalization have already reached high levels of sophistication in specific marketing domains. Theoretically, bringing customers back to segmentation decisions is a way to acknowledge the active role they can potentially play. Process-wise, through customer involvement, cultural segmentation avoids using external, a priori, and unilateral categories to forge understanding of a company’s markets.
