ABSTRACT
In 1988, the client of mine who was a VALS subscriber decided to find out if the different VALS groups wanted different things in real estate classified advertising. Could segmentation be used to write different newspaper advertisements to make houses appeal to different segments of customers? Could it be used to make the same house appeal to more than one segment of customer rather than use the traditional feature-driven advertisement that seeks to appeal to everyone by focusing on no one and forcing the focus onto the product? Something needs to be done because the state of classified real estate advertising is bad; in 1997, The Wall Street Journal reviewed its home-of-the-week feature, which specialized in houses then going for more than $1 million; only fourteen of eighty-one listings had sold, with four more under contract (Paik, 1997). Although there are many reasons why houses do not sell, advertising that does not appeal to those who are more apt than others to buy is also a suspected culprit.
