International market segmentation based on consumer-product relations

With increasing competition in the global marketplace, international segmen tation has become an ever more important issue in developing, positioning, and selling products across national borders. The authors propose a methodo logy to identify cross-national market segments, based on means-end chain t heory. The methodology offers the potential for integrating product develop ment and communication strategies by linking product characteristics to con sumer benefits and values. For that purpose, a model is developed that iden tifies relations between the consumer and the product at the segment level, which increases the actionability and responsiveness of the segments. The model accounts for different response tendencies, across and within countri es, that commonly hamper identification of cross-national segments. A Monte Carlo study shows that the model performs well in recovering the parameter s across a wide range of conditions, The segmentation model is applied to c onsumer data on yogurt collected in 11 countries of the European Union. Fou r international segments are identified and found to be related to consumer sociodemographics, consumption patterns, media consumption, and personalit y, The authors show that the model has high predictive validity and outperf orms the standard clustering approaches traditionally employed in internati onal segmentation.