Internet Marketing

by Ankit Garg

Customer Segmentation is a common jargon in marketing. It is said that every company should first segment its customers, choose the target segment and then should aim to satisfy their needs.
In this web 2.0 era when businesses are going online and the e-commerce is increasing its share in the whole trade dramatically, the question arises:
Do the companies know how to segment the customers on the basis of their internet usage pattern?
or
Do they assume that "All visitors are created equally" ?
or
Has there been any research done to understand internet consumers based on their usage pattern?
If companies don’t have this primary information, how are they expected to do business?
How are they supposed to leverage the benefits of the internet?
The answer is being provided by a study conducted by Mckinsey and Media Metrix which identifies internet consumer segmentation for the first time on their usage patterns.
According to the study, the different categories along with their short descriptions are:
1) Simplifiers : "End-to-End" Convenience seeking people. They spend on an average 7 hours per month but have the longest tenure online. Therefore if an internet marketer wants to have sustained sales from this segment, they must provide end-to-end convenience such as ease of access, availability of information etc.
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