A Theoretical Critique of Segm PDF

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A THEORETICAL CRITIQUE OF SEGMENTATION
IN CONSUMER MARKETS
by
MARK R. PHILLIPS, JR.
A DISSERTATION
Presented to the Department of Speech

and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
August 1997
rf _ _
UMI Number: 9810020
UMI Microform 9810020

Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.
This microform edition is protected against unauthorized

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"A Theoretical Critique of Segmentation in Consumer
Markets," a dissertation prepared by Mark R. Phillips, Jr.
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of

Philosophy degree in the Department of Speech. This
dissertation has been approved and accepted by:
Dr. Ji et Wasko, Chair of the Examining Committee
J
Date
Committee in charge: Dr. Janet Wasko, Chair

Dr. Charles Frazer
Dr. Daniel Pope
Dr. Ronald Sherriffs
and Dean of the Graduate School
An Abstract of the Dissertation of
Mark R. Phillips, Jr. for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in the Department of Speech to be taken August 1997
Title: A THEORETICAL CRITIQUE OP SEGMENTATION
IN CONSUMER MARKETS
As the practice of market segmentation becomes more
entrenched, pervasive and sophisticated it is incumbent on
researchers in disparate fields — political economy,
cultural studies, media criticism, marketing, business and
advertising — to more carefully examine segmenting, or
niching, consumer markets.
The purpose of this study is to examine the promises,
polices and practices of segmentation and to ascertain what
drives it and what ramifications we can observe and

anticipate.
The goal of this research is explicated in four basic
ways: first, an overview of the evolution of segmentation;
second, a scrutiny of three segmentation system exemplars;

third, a discussion of the ramifications of segmentation;
and fourth, a comparison of the issues discussed in
periodicals from the aforementioned disciplines.
Results indicate that segmentation has evolved
principally as a marketing endeavor facilitating company/

product or brand positioning. As such, segments are not so
much identified as manufactured/ thus elevating advertising
in prominence. The ramifications of such practices are
varied, but most prominent is the fragmentation of both

media and society.
Finally, to compare issues of import among disciplines
concerned with segmentation, a leading trade journal in
advertising, and academic periodicals from marketing and
consumer behavior were perused for the last five years
totaling over 16,000 articles. In addition various
databases were searched and the resulting titles and
abstracts numbering over 25,000 were scanned. Remarkably,
not a single article or abstract criticized or questioned
the policy of segmentation. In the fields of social and

media criticism such critiques were manifest. This mutual
exclusiveness suggests a level of insulation around
marketing and advertising practitioners that will tend to
guarantee maintenance of the segmentation status quo.
V
CURRICULUM VITA
NAME OF AUTHOR: Mark R. Phillips, Jr.
PLACE OF BIRTH: Jacksonville, Florida

DATE OF BIRTH: January 18, 1954
GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:

University of Oregon
Oregon College of Education
DEGREES AWARDED:
Doctor of Philosophy in Speech, 1997, University of

Oregon
Master of Science in Marketing, 1990, University of
Oregon
Master of Business Administration in Marketing, 1986,
University of Oregon
Bachelor of Science in Marketing, 1976, University of
Oregon
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:

Mass Communication
Advertising
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Teaching Assistant, Marketing, University of Oregon,

Eugene, 1987-1990
Teaching Assistant, Department of Speech, University of

Oregon, Eugene, 1991-1993
Teaching Assistant, Journalism and Communication,

University of Oregon, Eugene, 1993-1994
AWARDS AND HONORS:
1986 MBAA Outstanding Second Year Student Award
1993-94 Starlin Award - Outstanding Graduate Student in

Telecommunications and Film
GRANTS:
Marketing Science Institute, 1990-1991, with Donald S.
Tull, Bruce E. Cooley, and Harry S. Watkins
PUBLICATIONS:
Tull, Donald S., Bruce E. Cooley, Mark R. Phillips,
Jr., and Harry S. Watkins. 1991. "The Organization of
Marketing Activities of American Manufacturers." The
Marketing Science Institute Working Paper Series,
Report No. 91-126 (October).
Wasko, Janet, and Mark Phillips. 1993 "The Business of

Sports: Teal's the Deal." Oregon Sports News 1, 7
(Spring): 48-51.
Wasko, Janet, and Mark Phillips. 1994. "The Business of
Sports: Sports Agencies Go Corporate." Oregon Sports
News 1, 8 (Winter): 46-53.
Wasko, Janet, Mark Phillips, and Chris Purdie. 1993.
"Hollywood Meets Madison Avenue: The
Commercialization of U.S. Films." Media Culture &
Society 15, 2 (April): 271-293. (excerpted in Old
Oregon. 1992. "Plugs on Film" 71, 3 [Spring]: 9-10.)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author expresses gratitude to Dr. Janet Wasko for
her forbearance, knowledge, insight, and unfailing goodwill.

Her assistance in this project was of incalculable value.
The members of my committee — Dr. Charles Frazer, Dr.
Daniel Pope, and Dr. Ronald Sherriffs — have provided
valuable direction both before and during the process of
writing this manuscript. I am sincerely appreciative.
If patience is a virtue, then these scholars are truly

righteous.
DEDICATION
To Beck.
Forever and ever and twelve days.
i
ix
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. INTRODUCTION................................... 1
Significance of s t u d y .................. 3
Organization of Chapters ..................... 11
II. A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF SEGMENTATION INTHE

TWENTIETH C E N T U R Y ............................ 13
III. DESCRIBING SEGMENTS: THREE S Y S T E M S ............. 56
The Yankelovich Monitor S y s t e m .............. 59

Claritas' PRIZM System ....................... 70
SRI International's VALS ..................... 76
Concluding Comments .......................... 84
IV. MARKET SEGMENTATION: SOCIETAL EFFECTS .......... 87
Generic Demand ............................... 90

Demand for Brands ............... 102
Privacy and Control .......................... 115
Fractionized Media, FragmentedM a r k e t s ....... 124
Green, Green, It's Green, TheyS a y ........... 134
V. RESEARCH ON MARKET SEGMENTATION:TRENDS AND
CONFLICTS .................................... 144
Research Questions .................. 145

Research Methods and Findings ............... 149
Interesting Issues: Commonality and
Contradiction.............................. 157
S u m m a r y ...................................... 178
IV. CONCLUSION..................................... 180
Research Disciplines ......................... 183

Future O u t l o o k ............................... 187
Final Thoughts ............................... 190
X
APPENDIX Page
A. PRIZM GEODEMOGRAPHIC CLUSTERS ..................... 195
B. ARTICLES CONSULTED ................................ 202
ENDNOTES ................................................ 203

REFERENCES .............................................. 205
LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1. Brief Generation Descriptions ................... 63
2. Generational Remembrances ....................... 65

3. The "In'* C r o w d .................................. 65
4. Technologies to R e m e m b e r ........................ 65
5. Remember When ................................... 66
6. On the E d g e ................... 66
7. PRIZM Geodemographic Clusters ................ 71
8. Urban Gold Coast: Demographics .................. 73

9. Urban Gold Coast: Lifestyle Indexes ............ 74
10. Cola Wars ....................................... 76
11. Demographics and Attitudes of SRI VALS Lifestyle

Categories ....................... 81
12. Media Usage Patterns of SRI VALS Lifestyle

Categories ..................................... 82
1
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Market segmentation is one of the most important

concepts in the consumer behavior and marketing
literature. In fact, a primary reason for studying
consumer behavior is to identify bases for effective
segmentation, and a large portion of consumer research
is concerned with segmentation (Peter and Olson 1990,
402).
Market segmentation is the basis of most marketing

strategy (Hawkins, Best, and Coney 1989, 12).
Parking garages supplying newest venue for TV spots

— Headline, Advertising Age (Hodges 1996, 35).
The practice of market segmentation, dividing the

potential audience into relatively homogeneous subgroups, is
neither a new or revolutionary development. Retail
enterprise from its very inception (farmer's markets,
trading posts, mom and pop stores) has served local
constituents, thus practicing a form of geographic
segmentation. Name brand products and national retail

establishments were subsequently promoted, thus segmenting
markets by focusing on those who used the products and/or
shopped at the retail chain. More recently, volume
segmentation, or the so called "heavy half," was embraced.
This theory posited that in most product categories one-half

of consumers account for approximately 80 percent of
2
consumption. Volume segmentation advocated concentrating
promotional efforts on this heavy half (Haley 1972). Today,

while these simplistic techniques are still utilized, we
have moved into an era of much greater sophistication, much
greater prevalence and a continuing level of proliferation
of market segmentation strategies and practices.

Market segmentation as a strategy can be reduced to
three main endeavors:
1) identify a target segment, i.e., a relatively

homogeneous group as described by certain designated
characteristics or behaviors;
2) create/modify a product offering and/or position a

product to meet the group's needs or desires;
3) design an advertising/marketing effort that caters

to the identified needs or desires of the target group.
Segmenting a market is a many-varied and often
overlapping process. One can segment based on demographic,

personality and/or lifestyle characteristics. Segments can
be based on behavior, such as quantity of usage (light,
moderate, or heavy) or situational usage, e.g. watches for
athletes, formal wear, or everyday wear (Mowen 1990).
Segmentation can be based on the benefits consumers expect
to realize from product usage (Peter and Olson 1987).

Strategies have evolved for utilizing more than a
single attribute when segmenting markets such as clustering,

or geodemographics (Weiss 1988) and psychographics (Piirto
1991). Typologies that have arisen to assist the

segmentation process include PRIZM (Potential Rating Index
3
for ZIP Markets), VALS (Values and Lifestyles) and the

Yankelovich Monitor, among others.
The sole stated function of this methodology is to more
narrowly target a product/ad message to a specific group of
individuals who are, theoretically, more similar than the
mass as a whole. Advertising and the media play an

intrinsically pivotal function in this process of segmenting
markets. Obviously, we have come a long way from the days

of "street cries and shop signs" (Schuwer 1966) to what has
been described as advertising's "Era of Market Segmentation"

(Pope 1983).
Significance of Study
In the 40 years since Wendell Smith (1956) first
articulated the concept of market segmentation, it has

gained in stature to the point that it now ".... permeate (s )
the thinking of managers and researchers alike as much, if
not more, than any other single marketing concept since the
turn of the century" (Frank 1972, 132).
What has been the result of this focus on segmenting

markets? Statistics tell part of the story. Supermarkets
carry 30,000 different packages today, up from 17,500 a
decade ago. Network television airs 6,000 commercials a

week, up 50 percent since 1983. Prime-time television
devotes more than ten minutes to advertising every hour,
approximately one minute more than aired in 1990? throw in
I
i
4
promos and almost 15 minutes of every prime-time hour

consists of advertising (Kuntz and Weber 1996). It is
estimated that the average American will devote almost three
years of his or her life to watching television ads

(Jacobson and Mazur 1995).
Home television advertising is just the tip of iceberg.
In addition to television monitors broadcasting ads in
parking garages, there are monitors in airports, airplanes
and commuter trains, classrooms and amusement parks, health

clubs, grocery stores and all manner of retail
establishments. Product placement in motion pictures

(Wasko, Phillips, and Purdie 1993) and television (Hajdu
1988) has become a fact of doing business. There have been
product placements in Broadway plays (Elliott 1994; Lipman
1992b) and at least one novel (Queenan 1989). In perhaps
the ultimate placement, an entire novel was based on a

popular advertising campaign for the coffee brand, Taster's
Choice (The Reaister-Guard 1993). So called "place based"
advertising has experienced a remarkable resurgence as have

direct mail and telemarketing. The Internet and related
computer services are just beginning to explore advertising
potentialities.
Total U.S. ad spending in 1995 reached $162 billion

(Kuntz and Webber 1996) and it is estimated that businesses
spend in excess of $100 billion per year, in addition to

advertising expenditures, on such promotions as in-store
5
displays, coupon redemptions, point-of-purchase materials,

etc. (Jacobson and Mazur 1995).
Advertising is not the sole area experiencing change as
a result of a segmentation mentality. Media continues to
splinter into more and more outlets designed to target more
specific audiences. Cable channels have proliferated with
no single channel garnering more than two percent of the
audience. Well over 200 national television networks are
currently being beamed over satellites to cable system
subscribers (Television & Cable Factbook 1997). Radio
station licenses now number in excess of 12,000, compared
with 1,300 in 1946 (Television & Cable FactbooK 1997).

During the 1970s and 1980s, 13,000 special interest
publications were launched (Weiss 1988). During the same
period the number of daily newspapers sold per 100
households dropped precipitously (Bagdikian 1992).
As advertising increased and media evolved, society
also felt the effects of segmentation. No longer was
society stratified only along political, geographical or

strictly economic variables but by cultural tastes and
lifestyles. In their sociological treatise on white,
middle-class America, Habits of the Heart. Robert Bellah and

his associates explain,
The concept of one's "peers" concomitantly underwent a

subtle, but important, shift of meaning. It came to
signify those who share the same specific mix of
activities, beginning with occupation and economic
position, but increasingly implying the same attitudes,
tastes, and style of life (Bellah et al. 1985, 44).
6
Understanding such "attitudes, tastes, and style of
life" has become the focus of market research activities,
itself now a multi-billion dollar endeavor.
In a sense, consumption rather them production, has

become the central organizing construct of the market and of
society at large (Sulkunen 1997). Commodities are no longer
presented by their specific uses or attributes; instead
products, and more specifically, consuming products is
advocated as a way to achieve the "good life" (Falk 1997).
Advertising psychologist Ernest Dichter offers insight into
the logic of this representation.
Strictly speaking, a new car, a color TV-set,

cigarettes, beer, or French wine are not necessities.
But they represent aspects of a full life (Dichter
1960, 16).
Nor are strictly consumer "goods" the only commodities
affected by segmentation: political speech, information
access and journalistic standards are increasingly dictated
by segmentation analysis (Baker 1994); labor (Noyelle 1987),
technology (Robins and Webster (1988), the environment
(Bradford 1991), and culture (Miller 1987) all have felt the
impact of segmentation strategies.
Segmentation has become more them just a targeting
mechanism to facilitate a better match between production
and consumption; it dictates production and consumption, has
broad political and societal effects and has inculcated
itself into the framework of our culture. It is virtually a
state of mind. Thus, the Catholic Church can, on the one
7
hand, sell 100-odd items bearing the Pope's likeness during
his 1993 visit to Denver and, on the other hand, produce a
37 page text, Ethics in Advertising, decrying excesses in
advertising and calling for advertisers to be more
"responsible" (Advertising Acre 1997a).
Business, marketing, and advertising research offers a
wealth of information pertaining to segmenting markets.
However, it is unclear how much of this literature adopts a
critical perspective — a consideration of the structural,
cultural, and social ramifications of segmenting markets.
Cultural industries certainly approaches the study of
information, media and audiences from a critical perspective
but, by and large, fails to approach this research from a

perspective acknowledging segmentation as the focal point.
For example, critical research is obviously concerned with
questions of power and social management, with constructs
related to the ideology of consumption, with the
commodification of culture; critics target advertising,
media conglomeration, media fragmentation, etc., but
generally tend to treat market segmentation as a corollary

or byproduct of these issues.
This suggests the need for a critique of the concept,

policies and practices of market segmentation. An approach
that grapples with the research themes raised by cultural
industries but frames the discussion within the context of

segmentation and recognizes that segmenting markets is a
8
strategic construct. Recognizing that segmentation is a
strategy is at the crux of Richard Tedlow's (1990)
differentiation between the term "segment" as a verb rather

than as a noun. Essentially, market segments take on two
forms. The first, where segment is a noun, refers to
audience/consumer groups that are in some way concretely,
demonstrably distinct. Generally discriminating on some
sort of demographic characteristic, these groups are based
on what might be described as need realities, i.e., the
segment requires unique, specialized product offerings to
meet their real (physical) needs. Marketers observe the
segments, create or modify products to satisfy the reality

based needs, and communicate with the segments by announcing
the existence of genuine product characteristics designed to
specifically address the needs and wants of the target

group.
The second type of niche market, where segment is a
verb, involves segmenting the market, based not on genuine
product characteristics but on positioning products in the

minds of consumers. Such segments, based on psychographic
and life style manipulations, rely on symbolic and
referential appeals to persuade consumers that they need

certain products.
These two types of segments are both strategically
driven, but the strategies as implemented are diametrical.

The first type of segment is observed, the second is
9
created; the first requires unique or differentiated product
characteristics, the second is approached by positioning

generic products; the first is demand driven, the second is
driven by the imagination of marketers; the first has
special needs, the second has desires (Dichter 1960); the
first is a segment (noun), the second has been segmented

(verb).
Obviously, both types of segment exist and both
continue to be targeted by U.S. marketers. The question is,

as segmentation strategies evolve and become more
sophisticated which type, if either, will serve as the model
for future segmentation efforts?
The purpose of this study is to approach the research

themes identified above with market segmentation as the
foundation, the overarching principle dictating the point of
view of the analysis. The practice of market segmentation

will be considered both from a historical perspective and by
assessing current market practices. Critical theory will

guide both the ideological and methodological approach to
the topic, but business research will serve as an important

counterpoint to the endeavor. As such, this study will take
a non-reductive and overdetermined approach to market
segmentation, or as Vincent Mosco describes, a multiply
determined approach (1996, 5). The approach will attempt
not to approach segmentation simplistically or through a

process of diminution; rather, the complexity inherent in
10
any social process will be embraced and the temptation to
identify a single cause or define a core essentiality will

be resisted.
Segmentation as a phenomenon is complex and multiply
derived. Marketers, advertisers and media segment audiences
and consumers. Consumers segment themselves: by who they
are (gender, age, genetic disposition); by circumstance
(income, geography, affiliations); and by choices
(activities, product usage, media consumption). This
research will consider the totality of interactions among
manufacturers, marketers, media, advertisers and consumers
as they pertain to segmentation activities. Consumers
cannot control who they sure, may have less than complete
control over their individual circumstance, but generally do
have control over the choices they make. To the extent that
segmentation strategies attempt to influence those choices
it may be said that segmentation contributes to, or
exacerbates, problems such as societal fragmentation,
cultural commodification, media fractionization, etc. This
study, by considering segmentation from both the perspective
of business and cultural industries, aspires to elucidate
the intent of m o d e m segmentation as a strategy.
This study, then, offers three main assessments.
First, a description of the state of market segmentation in
consumer markets in the United States, approached from the
perspective of critical analysis; second, an analysis of
11
business research (marketing, consumer behavior, and
advertising) over the last five years — its predominant

perspective (administrative or critical) and a discussion of
themes relating to market segmentation; and, third, a
comparison of cultural industries and business research,
looking for areas of commonality and contradiction.

By utilizing and comparing business and cultural
industries research it is hoped that a clearer picture of

the state of market segmentation in this country will
emerge, as well as a better understanding of the issues
relating to this prevalent and proliferating practice.
Qrganizatign. pX-.ghflBfce.rs
The study is organized as follows, chapter II is a
brief overview of the history of market segmentation in this
country. This chapter attempts to place the evolution of
segmentation within the context of industrial development in

the United States.
Chapter III highlights three popular market

segmentation systems. These segmentation systems are
offered as exemplars of segmentation systems in general and

as a heuristic to assist the reader in better understanding
the intricacy and nuance involved in m o d e m segmentation.

Chapter IV looks at the promises and benefits of market
segmentation and discusses societal effects that can be

correlated to the practice of segmentation.
t
i
!
12
Chapter V analyzes the dominant perspective of business
research, assesses areas of convergence between business and

cultural industries research, and discusses issues of
interest to both schools of thought, highlighting
differences and commonalities between the two approaches.
Chapter VI, the conclusion, offers summary comments and

discusses areas of future research.
13
CHAPTER II
A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF SEGMENTATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
...by 1900 we begin to see the first segmenting of the

reading audience so the advertisers can focus on a
particular target.
— Advertising _In America: -The-First _2QQ Years
(Goodrum and Dalrymple 1990 , 33).
Tell me someone's zip code, and I can predict what they

eat, drink, drive — even think.
— Jonathan Robbin, creator of the PRIZM cluster
system (Weiss 1988, 1).
These quotes indicate the "progress" of segmentation in
the twentieth century. Goodrum and Dalrymple refer to the
rudimentary development of targeting magazines at specific
audiences: e.g., women, sports fans, occupations, religious
groups, etc. Weiss quotes the progenitor of a segmentation
system purportedly so sophisticated that it can not only

identify potential customers but tell advertisers what these
people actually think. While Robbin may be accused of
dealing in hyperbole, the fact that he can utter such a
claim and not be laughed out of the business says something
about the state of market segmentation and the seriousness
with which this practice is held by business, advertising

practitioners and media.
14
The purpose of this chapter is to trace the evolution
of segmentation in the U.S. in this century; focusing on the
transition, driven by the industrial revolution, from local
markets and generic goods to national markets and branded

products, from individuals viewed and treated as customers
to masses treated as consumers, from local markets to mass
market to segmented markets. In describing the development
of market segmentation in the twentieth century, the

antecedents of what most would consider m o d e m segmentation
will be made evident. Two specific examples will serve to
illustrate salient points: the strategy incorporated by
General Motors to differentiate their product and the
positioning strategy adopted by Pepsi in its battle with
Coca-Cola for supremacy in the soft drink market.
Market segmentation has been a de facto occurrence
since the very inception of business as we understand the
concept. Geographic segmentation, for example, has been all
but necessary as long as goods have been bartered, traded or
sold and remains preeminent for many goods and services
today. However, two events, both occurring around 1900,

began the onset of segmented markets as we currently view
them: the industrial revolution and the establishment of
national branded goods. Certainly there are many other

factors that have been identified as contributing to the
ability to segment markets; for example, the invention of
the automobile (lessening geographic restrictions), World
15
War I (forcing manufacturers and advertisers to consider the

role of women in purchase decisions), new media
(specifically, radio and television), regional
redistribution (the shift from a rural to an urban
populace), inexpensive and dependable transportation systems
(allowing not only customers to travel to goods but goods to

travel to customers).1
The industrial revolution created the ability to mass

produce goods at unprecedented levels and concurrently
created the problem of over-production. The ethos of the
revolution did not so much involve demand for products but

rather the ability to produce them. Thus, manufacturers
tended to view this problem as a human frailty; to wit, the
problem was not over-production but under-consumption

(Turner 1952).
Nationally branded products fundamentally changed the

relationship between retailers and consumers. Retailers
have evolved from an enterprise where the proprietor was

relied upon to recommend (mostly generic) goods to customers
to a situation where nationally branded products are made
available to consumers who shop and purchase these goods
virtually unaided. This process naturally involved a power

struggle among retailers, wholesalers and national
manufacturers over who would control the distribution chain
(see e.g. , Pope 1983; and Strasser 1989 for a discussion of

this struggle).
16
In both instances, the problem of over-production and
the evolution of the relationship between retailers and
consumers, advertising has been cited as critically
important.
There can be little doubt that modern advertising is a
marketing technique for business enterprise (Pease 1958).
What is not so clear cut is the effect that advertising has
on consumers. In the case of over-production related to the
industrial revolution it has been suggested that advertising

served both to increase demand for specific products and to
spur consumption in general (Ewen 1976). National
advertising for brand name products is viewed as a critical
component in inducing consumers to demand specific, branded
products thus instituting a pull strategy whereby customer
demand "pulled" branded products down through the
distribution chain (Strasser 1989).
The actual effect (definitive, quantifiable)
advertising had on consumers in the early part of the
twentieth century is anecdotal. We know that manufacturing
capacity in the United states increased by a factor of seven

between 1865 and 1900 (Emery and Emery 1984). We know that
as the U.S. population doubled between 1880 and 1910 the
production of pig iron, paper, cottonseed oil and railroad
freight cars increased by factors of seven, nine, fourteen

and four, respectively (Strasser 1989). We know that as
industrial capacity increased dramatically not only were
17
products previously produced by hand now mass produced, but
literally dozens of new products were created: toothpaste,
cameras, chewing gum, light bulbs, flashlights, safety
razors, etc. Of course, people needed to be informed of
these new offerings and therefore a concomitant increase in
advertising was documented: The total national figure for
advertising was approximately $50 million in 1867; this
increased to $500 million by 1900, $5.5 billion by 1950, and
$22.4 billion in 1972 (Boorstin 1973). Total U.S. ad
spending stood at $162 billion in 1995 (Kuntz and Weber

1996).
It would be presumptuous to conclude that advertising
was solely responsible for increases in consumption in this
country during and since the industrial revolution.
Obviously, the causes and effects of the industrial
revolution are complicated as is tracking trends and causes

of consumption. For example, while advertising was
increasing tenfold between 1867 and 1900, small retailers
still had tremendous influence with consumers — before 1912
not even chain stores had self-service and by as late as
1923, fully two-thirds of American retail business was done
by establishments run by the owner with help from the
immediate family; so called "mom-and-pop" stores (Strasser
1989). Obviously, even the most effective advertising
campaigns could be undermined by disaffected retailers. As
Daniel Pope (1983, 110-111) so accurately points out
18
advertising does not occur in a vacuum and should be viewed
as only one component in an integrated marketing strategy.

Conversely, it is manifest that the whole point of
advertising is to increase consumption. National
advertisers during the dramatic expansions at the beginning
of the twentieth century
...did more than entreat and inform the consumer.

Singly, ads tried to persuade Americans to buy
manufacturers' brands. Collectively, they presented
an invitation and an injunction to partake in a
consumer society (Pope 1983, 111).
It should also be noted that it was during this period
that advertising became a full-fledged industry unto itself.

Manufacturers desperate for sales growth to keep pace with
production increases were easy prey for overtures lauding
advertising as "an irresistible force of suction that would
draw goods through dealer and wholesaler" (Hotchkiss, as

quoted in Pease 1958). Pease asserts that it is,
...generally agreed that those most responsible for

encouraging manufacturers to use advertising were the
agents of commercial publishing houses who sold space
either as direct representatives of newspapers or
magazines or as independent space jobbers whom the
publishers paid on commission (1958, 5).
At the same time advertising agencies began to focus on

manufacturers rather than retailers. Firms such as J.
Walter Thompson, Calkins and Holden, and N. W. Ayer and Son

turned their sights on luring manufacturers into national
advertising campaigns (Calkins 1946). Interestingly, many
of the manufacturers originally engaged in national
advertising remain familiar today — Procter & Gamble,
19
Colgate-Palmolive, H. J. Heinz, Borden, Eastman Kodak,
Quaker Oats, Pillsbury, Campbell Soups, Carnation, Libby

McNeil & Libby, and American Tobacco (Schudson 1984).
It was during this period that the triadic relationship
between media, advertising agencies and manufacturers was
cemented. Media, which had always relied on ad revenue,

became dependent on advertising for their very existence.
This system of advertising supported media has maintained to
the present. Along with the media, advertising agencies
rely on the beneficence of advertisers, principally

manufacturers, to perpetuate their survival. Both the media
and ad agencies are entities unto themselves, in many
instances unconcerned with effects or effectiveness of

advertising but utterly concentrated on maintaining their
revenue flow. Advertising agencies are not, in effect,
agents at all but businesses acting in their own best

interests as intermediaries between advertiser and media
(Sinclair 1987). If one were to look for indications of
allegiance the fact that advertising agencies are generally
paid by the media might hold sway. Certainly an agency must

strive to keep an advertising client happy but the fact is
that an agency's income in not based on the amount of sales
an ad campaign generates but rather on the quantity of

advertising the agency places. The standard practice has
been for the media to pay a 15 percent commission to the ad
agency on the space or air time placed by the agency
20
(Sinclair 1987). While other compensation systems have
evolved "...the 15 percent solution is still taken as the

standard" (Schudson 1984, 47).
Thus, in the early part of the twentieth century, we
are witness to manufacturers urgently seeking ways to
dispose of burgeoning inventories coupled with the rise of

ad agencies encouraging national campaigns designed to
increase brand loyalty and media eager to accept increasing

ad revenues. The emphasis of the time was to reach mass
audiences. Certainly there were some instances of

discrimination among audience appeals; for example, it was
at times acknowledged that men, women or children might be

more suited to a specific product. But, more often, appeals
still aimed for masses of men or women or children. Given
the dearth of information available to indicate advertising
effectiveness, advertisers then (as now) relied on mass
audience numbers as a barometer of efficient advertising
expenditures. Ad agencies were willing partners to this
artifice in that a medium (in this period specifically

periodicals) with a larger audience (circulation) charged
more for the same space than a similar publication with a
smaller audience. Thus for essentially the same amount of

work an ad agency benefits more greatly from a larger
circulation placement than a smaller. To facilitate the

approbation of this system, agencies promoted the Audit
21
Bureau of Circulation in 1914, the purpose of which was to
verify the circulation claims of publishers (Pope 1983).

This emphasis on sheer audience size tended to mask
whatever identifiable differences existed among audiences.
Albert Lasker, president of Lord & Thomas asserted that nwe

are making a homogeneous" people out of a nation of
immigrants (Pope 1983, 258). "Meanwhile, national media
carrying ads for nationally-distributed brands were said to
weaken regional distinctions and peculiarities" (Pope 1983,

258).
The introduction of radio did little to abate the guest

for the mass. In fact, "the rise of radio made the relation
between seller and buyer more indirect than ever, and

deepened the mystery of who was receiving the advertiser's
message" (Boorstin 1973, 154). By definition, radio

"broadcasts" were sent out to nobody in particular, who
could not be identified or even counted, with no reliable

feedback as to who may have received the broadcast (Boorstin
1973). Various radio ratings services did spring up that
surveyed small samples and after determining which programs
had been listened to extrapolated to compute national

audience figures. A pioneer in this field was A. C.
Nielsen, who utilized a device invented by two M.I.T.
professors, called the Audimeter, that when attached to a

radio receiver recorded the times that the radio was turned
on and the frequencies to which it was tuned (Boorstin
i
f
i
l
■rfP ___________ . __________
22
1973). Nielsen later applied a similar system to
television. Obviously, the Audimeter could not determine
who in the family was listening, if anyone, and at any rate

no one seemed particularly interested in the types of
demographic, not to mention psychographic and lifestyle
information that would become de rigueur in the latter

quarter of the century. Rather, raw numbers indicating the
size of the audience sufficed.
Thus, during the ascendancy of radio, roughly from the

1920s through the 1940s, the audience was assumed to be
undifferentiated. In fact, early in its existence radio was

viewed with almost reverence; sponsorship of quality
programming was deemed acceptable, direct advertising on the

medium was viewed with disapproval (Marchand 1985; Douglas
1987; Lewis 1991). Radio was viewed as a technology capable

of cultural uplift, a civilizing force that would put all
Americans on a level playing field (Barnouw 1968). One ad

from National Carbon Company proclaimed, "The air is your
theater, your college, your newspaper, your library"

(Marchand 1985, 90).
The implicit assumption was that all people were

essentially the same; expose them to the same stimulus and
they will all react similarly. The George Batten agency
claimed to have surveys showing that in 1923, 75 percent of
respondents preferred jazz music while only 20 percent

preferred symphonic music. By 1925 these preferences had
23
reversed with 50 percent favoring symphonic music and only
ten percent expressing a preference for jazz. The agency

attributed this turnaround to the culturally elevating
effects of radio (Marchand 1985).
At the same time radio was viewed as the most majestic
medium of the time, it was unigue in the juxtaposition it

applied to advertising and entertainment. Advertisers
created the entertainment, i.e., produced the shows. While
overly blatant shilling was frowned upon, mostly from fear

of a consumer backlash, sponsorship was deemed acceptable
(Barnouw 1968). Sponsors "advertised" by mentioning brand
names: "such and such show sponsored by such and such
company." This technique was expanded upon by actually

naming the shows after the sponsor's products, thus
increasing the opportunities to tactfully mention brand
names. Palmolive Soap expanded the envelope on this

strategy by actually changing the names of two lead singers
on one of their sponsored shows from Frank Munn and Virginia
Rea to Paul Oliver and Olive Palmer (Marchand 1985).
By the 1930s advertisers had overcome their inhibitions

about radio and the endemic of U.S. media — buying
time/space within which to make direct appeals — was

prevalent.
While manufacturers and advertisers were pursuing the

mass audience, the seeds that would flower into segmentation
as we know it today were being sown. The proliferation of
24
branded products and the advertising emphasis on creating
brand loyalty resulted in segments that were described by

their fidelity to products and stores. To use a m o d e m
example, drink a Pepsi and join the "Pepsi Generation."
Daniel Boorstin describes these consumers connected by

shopping at the same stores and using the same products as
"consumption communities" (Boorstin 1973).
Certainly newspapers had always maintained a local or
regional perspective and even large department store chains

were mindful that individual stores operated in a local
environment. More specialty magazines began to spring up
targeting women (e.g., Ladies/ Home Journal). activities
(e.g., hunting), occupations (e.g., farmers), etc. Even

broader based periodicals such as Time, Fortune and The New
Yorker cannot be viewed as competitors of the more mass
appeal offerings of Reader's Digest or Saturday Evening

Post. One early advertising textbook even discusses the
efficacy of targeting various populations by utilizing

specialty magazines and local newspapers (Calkins 1915). It
should be noted that the author goes on to advise against

using such targeted periodicals because they will not be as
efficient as their mass market counterparts.
Also during the early 1900s we see the genesis of what

will become a critical element in m o d e m segmentation
strategies: market research.
25
In 1911 Cyrus Curtis, publisher of the Ladies' Home
Journal and the Saturday Evening Post, desired to know more
facts about his readers in order to facilitate ad sales.
The man he hired to undertake the investigation, Charles
Pariin, named his endeavor "commercial research" (Boorstin
1973). Also in 1911 the advertising manager of the Kellogg
breakfast food company persuaded fifty other national
advertisers to support his postcard-questionnaire survey of
magazine readership (Boorstin 1973). Various newspapers and
other magazines also began to undertake research on their

readers.
Manufacturers were soon to jump on the research

bandwagon. Further, this period saw the beginnings of
product differentiation and segmentation strategies based on
promoting these product differences. Undoubtedly the most
famous of early segmentation efforts was General Motors in
the 1920s under the leadership of Alfred P. Sloan and Pierre
s. DuPont. Rather than compete directly against Henry
Ford's low cost, no frills offering the GM braintrust
determined to create a line of cars differentiated by

features and targeting various price ranges running the
gamut from basic-low cost (Chevrolet) to luxury-high cost
(Cadillac) (Tedlow 1993). As Daniel Pope (1983) points out
this marketing strategy was only possible because of
manufacturing improvements but it also is important to note
that in General Motors' strategy we see the beginnings of an
26
erosion in the hegemony of manufacturing over market

considerations. As Sloan himself stated, "By the mid
twenties, the product engineer had begun to feel the
influence of sales people. He then began to yield to market
considerations" (Pope 1983, 261). As Ford stuck to his
manufacturing efficiency focus GM leapfrogged by him to

leadership in the auto industry. As Pope notes, Ford's
dictum that car customers could have any color Model T they
wanted as long as it was black had lost its technological
rationale. The strategy of GM was the beginning of market
segmentation in the U.S. auto industry that pertains today.
"By the 1960s Detroit had created the assembly-line 'custom'
car, an oxymoron on wheels" (Pope 1983, 261).

Susan Strasser (1989) cites the introduction of Crisco
by Procter and Gamble in 1912 as a segmentation strategy
before its time. Procter and Gamble engaged in extensive

product testing, sales promotion and advertising plans. A
month prior to the first national advertising campaign the

company sent packages containing three to six cans of Crisco
to every grocer in the U.S., with a letter explaining that

the good folks at P&G wanted the grocer to be prepared for
the demand that the ad campaign would create. After
introduction, Crisco demonstrators toured the country
conducting cooking schools and the company offered free

recipe books and menu planners. Specialty containers were
designed to appeal to various segments. After a ten pound
27
container was created twenty-two railroads adopted Crisco.
A special Jewish package was created and advertised in the

Yiddish media bearing the seals of prominent rabbis who
declared Crisco kosher.
Despite the examples just cited, as the country moved

into mid-century manufacturers and advertisers were still,
by and large, seeking a mass audience. It may be
elucidative at this point to consider the customer, or
market, side of the equation.
The industrial revolution and its byproducts

fundamentally changed the American populace.
New ways of relating to the objects of everyday life —

the material culture of American society — developed
along with this physical and economic landscape.
During the decades around the turn of the century,
branded, standardized products came to represent and
embody the new networks and systems of production and
distribution, the social relationships that brought
people the things they used. Household routines
involved making fewer things and purchasing more;
consumption became a major part of the work of the
household. Formerly customers, purchasing the objects
of daily life from familiar craftspeople and
storekeepers, Americans became consumers (Strasser
1989, 15).
It was the job of business and their communicators,

advertisers, to teach these new consumers how to behave, or
more accurately, how to consume.
In a sense the industrial revolution approached
consumers and merchandise the same way: via mass production.

Just as mechanization, division of labor, time and motion
studies and even rudimentary ergonmics facilitated the mass

production of merchandise so did urban migration, branded
28
products and m o d e m advertising and promotional techniques

enable the mass production of consumers.
Henry Ford, echoing the mindset of the majority of
those driving the industrial revolution, viewed this process
as inevitable. That is, mass production must necessarily
result in mass consumption. What makes Ford's thinking
unique is his explicit recognition that mass production
would not only influence consumption but also meant
.. .a new system of the reproduction of labor power, a

new politics of labor control and management, a new
aesthetics and psychology, in short, a new kind of
rationalized, modernist, and populist democratic
society (Harvey 1989, 126).
Consumption, then, is the highway and byway of m o d e m

industrialized society. People must be taught to consume
and consume and consume even more. Rather than making or
bartering for many of the implements used in daily life
consumers are encouraged to purchase these items. Rather
than reusing or repairing items it is advisable (and often

cheaper) to simply purchase new products. Consumers are
even encouraged to discard perfectly usable items with the

proviso that they need the "new and improved" version.
Automobiles have added an interesting twist to this paradigm
by advising car owners to trade off their "old" (used) cars

for new ones in order to maintain a high level of resale
value. The more often one trades in a car the higher the
trade-in value thus the more fiscal perspicacity exhibited
by the buyer (conversely, the longer one holds on to a used
i
t
f
29
car the lower its trade-in value toward a new car). Of
course, it is never really explained why it makes more

financial sense to trade in a perfectly usable, virtually
new car for a brand new car, paying a surplus for the
privilege, when one could just as well save money, time and
effort by just driving the "old" auto.
The ethic of consumption was approached consciously
and deliberately. Edward Filene, an industrialist during
the first quarter of the century, specifically spoke of

"social planning" as regards the efforts to create a
consumer culture (Filene 1931, 271). Earnest Calkins in
describing advertising practitioners as consumption
engineers, ironically presaging current efforts to describe

non-offensively, exhorted advertising to "...see to it that
we use up the kind of goods we now merely use." He went on
to state, "Consumption engineering does not end until we can

consume all we can make" (Calkins 1930, 52).
Social historian Stuart Ewen (1976) expresses no
surprise at the premeditation of these "Captains of

Consciousness."
Consumerism, the mass participation in the values of

the mass-industrial market, thus emerged in the 1920s
not as a smooth progression from earlier and less
"developed" patterns of consumption, but rather as an
aggressive device of corporate survival (emphasis
added) (Ewen 1976, 54).
A principal tool in inculcating the values of a

consumer society into the populace was advertising. Three
30
advertising goals have been identified during the first
quarter of the twentieth century.
1. In an economy increasingly dependent for its
stability on mass consumption, advertising could become a
powerful stimulant to consumption and an essential creator

of new wants.
2. Advertising can be a critical element in creating
public good will for both individual businesses and for

business enterprise in general.
3. Advertising could be liberated from the confines of
simple announcement and henceforth would be in a position to
adopt complex and sophisticated principles of persuasion.
(Pease 1958, 21).
The transformation from announcement to advertisement,
as we know it today, is of paramount importance on two
levels. First, it fills a void left by the relationship
between retailer and customer irrevocably altered by the
onset of branded products. Whereas prior to the
proliferation of brand names customers relied on retailers
to sell them goods (describe, recommend, cajole — in many
cases simply decide) after the decline of the customer-
retailer relationship consumers relied on the marketing
function (advertising, promotion, packaging, etc.) to sell
them products. This fact has long been recognized. Walter
Dill Scott puts it succinctly, "Advertising has as its one
function the influencing of human minds" (1913, 2). John E.
31
Kennedy's definition of advertising is even more terse,

"Salesmanship in print" (Pope 1983, 238)
Second, the concept of advertising, versus

announcement, conveys the idea that modern advertising
required a particular "mode of information" (Poster 1990)
that enables concrete products to be transformed into

representations conveyed by words and images.
Thus, the forces of the industrial revolution and the

concomitant need to mass produce consumers created what we
now recognize as modern advertising. Such advertising which

seeks to metamorphize products into representations has
undergone three broad stages of development.
1. The shift from product-centered argumentation and
representation to a thematisation of the product-user

relationship and further to the depiction of scenes of
consumption which emphasize the experiential aspect of

consumption.
2. The shift from the emphatically rational mode of

argumentation supported by essentially falsifiable
"evidence" of product utility towards representations of the
satisfaction that comes with using the product — again
emphasizing the experiential aspect of consumption.

3. The shift in communication from verbal and literary
means to audio-visual means, based on the development of
communications technology that is closely related to the two
former dimensions. Pictures were introduced to printed
32
advertising in the 1880s, photographs in the 1890s, and the
next century offered cinema, radio and of course, television

(Falk 1997, 86-87).
Historian Daniel Boorstin puts a generally positive
spin on products and their advertising representations. He

sees advertising in the first half of the century as
essential in acculturating immigrants and uniting society.
His concept of consumption communities envisions a populace
bound together by what they consume and he marvels at the
"new American ways of changing things from objects of

possession and envy into vehicles of community" (Boorstin
1973, 89). Things consumed become symbols and instruments
of these nebulous communities; men were less affiliated by

ideas and beliefs and more by what they purchased and used.
And all was governed by the "democracy of cash" (Boorstin

1973, 89).
Other observers have taken a less sanguine view of
consumer society. A society based on consumption comes to

make social distinctions based on who possess what.
Thorstein Veblen (1899) termed this "invidious distinction,"

a judgment of a person's worth made largely in terms of
whether or not that person appears willing to accept a given
consumption standard as a behavioral norm. However, such

invidious distinctions are increasingly difficult to
ascertain in any rational manner "...which leaves most

people with only a cheerful proclivity to play the game for
33
its own sake" (Leiss, Kline, and Jhally 1986, 263). John
Kenneth Galbraith makes the same point:

Consumer wants can have bizarre, frivolous, or even
immoral origins, and an admirable case can still be
made for a society that seeks to satisfy them. But
the case cannot stand if it is the process of
satisfying wants that creates the wants. For then the
individual who urges the importance of production to
satisfy these wants is precisely in the position of
the onlooker who applauds the efforts of the squirrel
to keep abreast of the wheel that is propelled by his
own efforts (Galbraith 1958, 153-154).
Modern advertising links products with socially

desirable referent systems and implicitly, if not
explicitly, suggests that if one acquires a product one also
acquires the meanings and goals of the referent system laid

out by the ad. In other words such values as love,
security, fun, etc. can be purchased by acquiring the

product (McAllister 1996). With remarkable relentlessness
advertising beats the drum of consumption (of course, what

else would it do?) so that the cumulative effect is an
enormous endorsement of consumption. "In the world of
advertising, self-actualization is achieved not through
political participation or intellect or world awareness, but

through consumption" (McAllister 1996, 60). Marx referred
to the twofold nature of commodities, i.e., a commodity is
not just a thing, but also a container of invisible social

relationships. It is this dual nature of the commodity that
mystifies our perception of capitalist realities (Heilbroner

1980). Marx called this mystification the "fetishism of
commodities." Jhally (1987) has adapted the term to
34
advertising to highlight the single minded focus it places
on consumption. Obviously, the goal of advertising is to

sell products. It certainly follows that advertising
messages will celebrate and emphasize the consumption of
products over, say, the production of goods, the
environmental impacts of usage, or the societal and cultural
ramifications of consumption. The result of this one
dimensional view is that consumers fetishize products,

viewing them only in terms of consumption (McAllister 1996).
Which brings us back to the idea of mass markets and

communicating with them.
One facet... is the symbolism consciously employed in

the manufacture and the sale of the product, including
the imagery employed in the advertising designs. The
second facet is the symbolic associations selectively
employed by consumers in "constructing” lifestyle
models; the whole market-place is divided into semi-
autonomous sectors which respond to different cues or
to the same cues in different ways (Leiss 1976, 82).
We are thus faced with a conundrum: In the mass
production of consumer goods, the target is both an
anonymous mass and distinct individuals, for what is a mass

market but a group of individuals? This same duality, as
Leiss notes, is present in the sender-receiver model of
communication; the message is sent out equally to the entire
mass but is received separately by each individual (Falk

1997).
As America moved into the 1950s, then, it was a society

firmly committed to the capitalist system, embodying a
consumption ethic where mass produced goods are directed at
35
mass markets using advertising messages that increasingly
emphasize symbolic meanings over concrete product utilities.

There was a certain amount of product differentiation and a
growing recognition that segments existed and could be
reached. Some targeting of specific groups via local radio
stations and/or specialty magazines did occur. However,

media images were by and large seen as subject to what
Michael Schudson (1984) terms "capitalist realism." This

theory avers that while people see themselves as individuals
they can all still relate to national ads because of the

"placeless and relatively timeless" scenes depicted in the
ads. In other words, national advertisements are so
abstract in terms of identifying features that everyone can

relate.
The advertisement, like the sales talk, links a seller

to a buyer. Unlike the sales talk, it connects the
buyer to an assemblage of buyers through words and
pictures available to all of them and tailored to no
one of them. Advertising is part of the establishment
and reflection of a common symbolic culture (Schudson
1984, 210).
This "available to all...tailored to no one" credo

admirably represents the attitudes of the majority of
businesses and advertisers around the mid~1900s. And

then television.
As with earlier media innovations, television tended to
adopt a structure similar to those that had preceded it.
Advertising supported, local stations formed into networks,
television was a quintessential mass market medium. During
36
its network heyday three networks, each trying to amass the
largest audience (which is to say the entire audience) by
offering staggeringly similar programs and identical
advertisements.
In many ways the 1950s were THE era of mass-marketing
with consumers shopping at the same chain stores, reading

the same all-things-to-all-people magazines fLook. Life.
Saturday Evening Post) and watching the same network
television shows (Weiss 1988).
As the decade progressed and as the power of television

increased in the marketplace, a shakeout began to occur in
the business of media. Unable to compete with television
for the mass audience, periodicals and radio more and more
began to position themselves as differentiated entities with

specific, targeted audiences. This shift is illustrative on
two levels: from the standpoint of business strategy and

from the perspective of consumers.
Michael Porter (1980) in his influential management

opus, Competitive Strategy, identifies three generic
strategies that a business can choose to utilize in order to

be competitive:
1. overall cost leadership
2. differentiation
3. focus.
Without going into too much detail, the basics of these
three strategies are as follows. Overall cost leadership
37
means quite simply that a business competes on price,
offering its product to consumers at a lower price than its
competitors. Differentiation means that a business

distinguishes its product offering in some way from all
other offerings industrywide. This could take the form of
quality, or service, or availability, or even price although
a low price position is usually not an option in a

differentiation strategy. Finally, focus, sometimes
referred to as a niche strategy, is segmentation. A

business identifies a buyer group, segment of the product
line, or geographic market and sets out to best serve this
identified niche. Whereas cost leadership and
differentiation have industry wide goals, the focus strategy

aims to select a particular segment and serve it well.
To understand the dilemma facing media competing with
television one need only look at television's remarkable

growth. in 1950 nine percent of U.S. households owned a
television, by I960 this percentage had increased to 87.1
(DeFleur and Dennis 1991). By 1992 television ownership had
nearly reached 99 percent, representing 93 million American

households (Pember 1992).
What this means in terms of Porter's competitive matrix
is that television had staked out both the cost leadership

and differentiation strategies for itself. How is this
possible? First, because of its audience size even though
it could charge larger raw amounts for ad space its cost per
38
thousand of viewers reached was lower than competing media.
Since advertisers of the period were primarily interested in
reaching mass audiences, the cost per thousand figure was
their holy grail. Second, as television quality improved it
was demonstrably a more popular medium, at least in terms of
entertainment, than its competitors because it alone
combined sound and picture (I am for the moment ignoring
cinema which was essentially a non-advertising medium in the
U.S., although it has recently jumped on the bandwagon - see
Wasko, Phillips, and Purdie 1993). Evidence for this
assertion lies not only in the raw audience numbers, or
ratings, but in the rapid rise of cable subscribers and VCR

owners. By 1990 the television set was on in the average
American home for a little over seven hours each day (Pember
1992).
If one gives credence to Porter's formula then the only
viable option left for media competing with television was
to convert to a focus strategy and indeed just such a
transformation has taken place. General periodicals such as
the Saturday Evening Post. Life and Look all withered and
died, in their place sprung selective periodicals that
attempted to attract advertisers not by competing head-to-
head with television but by trumpeting the advantages of

reaching the specific, distinctive audience they served.
Radio also transformed itself from a general entertainment
format trying to reach everyone to specific, targeted
39
offerings usually utilising a disc jockey format offering
specific types of music designed to attract audiences of
differing age and musical preferences. Newspapers
emphasized their ability to cover stories with in-depth
analysis and re-emphasized their focus on local issues

(Bagdikian 1992).
This is not to suggest that television was the sole
cause of a move towards segmentation. During the 1930s and
1940s some local radio stations targeted different ethnic
groups or occupational endeavors (e.g., farming) (Bamouw
1966), and as has already been stated, specialty periodicals
have been in existence since at least the early 1900s.
Furthermore, by the 1950s and 1960s there was an increasing
emphasis among manufacturers on product differentiation.
Incidental of television the trend toward segmentation
seems, in hindsight, inevitable. But there is little doubt
that the rapid increase in television's acceptance and
popular appeal increased the development of segmentation and
spurred the sophistication of its application.
A prominent example of the move toward differentiation,
and segmentation, is the cola wars of the late 1950s and
1960s. In 1959 Coca-Cola outsold Pepsi by a 2.5 to 1
margin. For 75 years Coke had dominated the soft drink
market with one essential strategy: sell a single product in
a single package available everywhere. Its advertising
E
t
I
T
40
campaigns were aimed at all markets and emphasized the
quality of the product.
Pepsi determined to challenge Coke's dominance by
focusing on the youth market which they believed consumed a
disproportionate amount of soft drinks. As one Pepsi
executive put it, "Teenagers consume soft drinks far in

excess of their weight in the population" (Louis and
Yazijian 1980, 138). This segmentation strategy, volume
segmentation, was popular during this period as it
incorporated the so called "heavy half" theory. The heavy
half referred to the hypothesis that in most product
categories it was believed that one-half of the consumers
accounted for 80 percent of the consumption (Haley 1972).

In 1961 Pepsi's ad agency, Batten, Barton, Durstine and
Osborn (B.B.D. & O.), released a highly musical ad centered
around the slogan, "Now, it's Pepsi, for those who think
young." The company spent $10,250,000 on advertising around
this theme in 1961 and almost $14,000,000 in 1962, with over
55 percent of the budget spent on television (Louis and
Yazijian 1980). As one B.B.D. & 0. executive explained, the
goal of the campaign was not only to appeal to the youth
segment but to portray Coke as "...a drink for people who
are out of step, out of touch, out of date" (Louis and

Yazijian 1980, 138).
Coke responded to Pepsi's challenge with the "Things Go

Better with Coke" campaign in mid-1963 and promised to back
41
the new slogan with unprecedented advertising expenditures.
In 1964 alone Coca-Cola and its bottlers spent $26 million
on national television commercials, up $10 million from the
previous year. By 1965 Coke's overall ad budget had swelled
to $58 million and increased to nearly $65 million in 1966.
The strategy was, however, still a mass market strategy,
seeking to reaffirm Coke's identity not only with the youth

market but with every market.
Clearly caught up in an escalating war where
advertising dollars were the weapons of choice, Pepsi
announced that it would invest $36 million in a "think
young” campaign in 1964. In September of that year Pepsi
unveiled its seminal slogan of youth appeal, "Come Alive,
You're in the Pepsi Generation." This slogan, or more
accurately, this description of Pepsi drinkers served for
over twenty years as a key facet in positioning Pepsi as the
"leading edge" soft drink that appealed not only to the
actual youth market but to those who think young, "look
forward, ...are curious about the next thing, ...want more
out of life" (Enrico and Korabluth 1986, 16).
By 1967 Pepsi had cut Coke's advantage in sales to 2.1
to 1. While this may not seem like much on the surface, in
the multi-billion dollar soft drink industry even small
shifts in market share translate into millions of dollars of

gross revenue.
42
By the mid-1960s all the major players in the soft
drink industry viewed the U.S. market as segmented. The
realization had dawned that all people were not just soft
drink consumers who happened to choose a particular brand
but that brands appealed to different segments. In addition
to Pepsi's positioning vis-a-vis Coke and its determined

pursuit of the high volume youth market, both colas
introduced brands to compete head to head against 7-Up
(Sprite and Teem), Coke introduced a citrus based noncola,

Fresca, and emphasized its lack of sugar and consequent
health aspects. Everyone got into the diet business led by

Royal Crown Company's Diet Rite and followed by Coca-Cola's
Ted) and Pepsi's Diet Pepsi. Diet Pepsi, aided by its
advertising campaign — "Girls girlwatchers watch drink Diet
Pepsi" — rapidly increased its market sheure, easily

outdistancing coke's disappointing Tab (Mack and Buckley
1982).
By 1977 Pepsi's food store sales had surpassed Coke's
(Pope 1983) and the concept of segmentation was well
entrenched. As one Pepsi executive declared, "The time has

gone when there was only one customer. Today as our
population grows and expands and becomes more sophisticated,
we're dealing with a fragmented market...So it's not enough

that we develop one approach" (Louis and Yazijian 1980,
128). Fred Dickson, Coke's marketing director echoed the
same sentiments, "...different people use different soft
43
drinks at different tines for different purposes, so our

whole objective is to lay down specialty products, with
carefully conceived marketing plans aimed at specific
markets. Ideally, we would approach the consumer with the
same specificity with which a salesman approaches a contact"
(Louis and Yazijian 1980, 136). Coke became so committed to

this approach that in July 1982 they did the previously
unthinkable: they introduced a product using a derivation of

the "Coke" name, i.e., Diet Coke. By 1985 the company had
introduced (new) Coke, Coca-Cola Classic, Caffeine-Free

Coke, Diet Coke, Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, and Cherry Coke
(Peter and Olson 1990).
In 1984 Coke and Pepsi's combined market share, largely

fueled by the success of their diet colas, had increased to
66.3 up from 64.7 percent the previous year. This
represents a $420 million gain in the $26 billion a year

soft drink industry (Peter and Olson 1990).
In many ways the trend toward segmentation can beseen

as a natural progression, almost a broad based example of
diffusion theory in practice (Rogers 1962). As has been
pointed out repeatedly there are examples of segmentation
principles and the antecedents of segmentation since early

in the century (see e.g., Fullerton 1988? Hollander 1986;
Pollay 1985; Pope 1983; Strasser 1989; and Tedlow 1990). It
is also apparent from the study of virtually any industry
that once someone adopts a segmentation strategy others in
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the industry also begin to factor segments into their
strategic analyses. As diffusion theory posits, there will
be innovators and early adopters as well as laggards both
across and within industries. But as we have also
witnessed, as we have progressed through the century the
pace of segmentation activities has increased to the point

where one would be hard-pressed to find a national
manufacturer not engaged in segmentation strategies.
At this point it is important to revisit Porter's
(1980) typology in order to clarify and explicate the
theoretical framework. In his groundbreaking article on
market segmentation, Wendell Smith (1956) specifically
distinguishes between product differentiation and market
segmentation. Product differentiation, in both Smith's and
Porter's definitions, involves emphasizing that one's
product is superior to competitors' in serving the needs and
desires of all consumers. Thus, Coca-Cola's traditional
strategy of emphasizing product quality and history (they
were the original cola, "The Real Thing") is a
differentiation strategy. A segmentation strategy according
to Smith, or what Porter refers to as a focus strategy,
involves adapting the product in some way to meet the
specific needs or desires of a specific segment or subset of
the market. General Motor's division into Chevrolet,
Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac with each
automobile offering different features targeting different
45
price ranges is a segmentation strategy in this strict sense

of the term.
The "Pepsi Generation" targeting of the youth market

is, however, an amalgamation of the two strategies in that
Pepsi did indeed target a segment, youth, but they did not
change their product at all to meet the needs of the

segment; rather, they altered their promotional appeals to
differentiate their product in the minds of the target

audience.
The whole process becomes somewhat more confusing when
one considers that product differentiation can take either

the form of actual product modifications or physical
differences, or, in Porter's analysis, can involve such non
product factors as service or distribution, or can be
strictly a function of advertising and promotion created
perception. Thus, when soda manufacturers targeted diet
conscious consumers they were certainly modifying their
products to meet a segment's needs, but once into the market

the colas were forced to differentiate their products along
perceptual lines: ignoring "secret formulas" and mystery
taste enhancers, a check of product labels shows that diet
colas are remarkably identical in terms fat, calories,

sugar, etc.
Finally, whereas Porter describes his low cost and
differentiation strategies as mass market, industry wide

strategies, it is obvious in the current, increasingly
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segmented marketplace that manufacturers can implement low
cost and differentiation strategies within segments. This

is particularly apparent when marketers engage in
psychological or lifestyle segmentation rather than
demographic divisions. As Tedlow (1990) aptly points out,
Pepsi's targeting of the youth segment not only recognized
the existence of an age group (whatever one defines as the
ages of youth), but also, in essence, created or
manufactured a segment consisting of those who wanted to
feel young, or considered themselves as young thinking.
Porter's typology, while a valuable heuristic, loses
some of its clarity in what has become a highly fragmented
marketplace. This perhaps does not lessen the value of
Porter's framework; rather, it addresses the difficulty, the
elusiveness, of describing markets that have reached a
level, and levels, of segmentation currently present inthe
United States. Coke and Pepsi can attest to this as they

saw their sales increases erode in the late 1980s while
maintaining their market share of the soft drink industry.
This seemingly contradictory result occurred due to the
introduction and aggressive marketing of various bottled
water products and fruit drinks such as Snapple which surged
in consumer spending. Coke and Pepsi apparently thought
they were in the carbonated soda pop market but as consumers
increasingly substituted other, non-carbonated soft drinks
for colas, the two industry giants rediscovered 1) there are
47
always segments within segments, and 2) it pays to know what

market you are in, and exactly who are your competitors.
As more and more manufacturers, and ultimately

industries, began segmentation activities, it was only
natural that they would be interested and eventually demand
that media would mirror their concerns and deliver segmented

audiences to advertisers. At the same time, much aided by
the increasing sophistication of computers, software and
networks, research activities increased exponentially,
allowing manufacturers and ad agencies to further define and

refine segments. The 1970s and 1980s saw an explosion in
specialized media and media offerings and increased scrutiny

of every facet of consumers' lives. During these two
decades approximately 13,000 special interest publications
were launched. By the late 1980s, according to Standard

Rate and Data Service, direct mail address lists had
increased to 55,000, each targeting a different group

ranging from golfers to rock music fans (Weiss 1988). Radio
continued to fragment as FK increased in popularity.
Government action spurred this growth first by approving FM

stereo broadcast and then by a Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) decision limiting simulcasts to 50 percent

of the broadcast day. Previously, most FM licenses were
owned by AM stations and these dual stations thus broadcast
identical programming over both frequencies (simulcasting).
The FCC decision resulted in many AM licensees selling their
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FM licenses rather than investing in new programming. By
the early 1970s FM had garnered 25 percent of radio

listeners and today accounts for approximately 75 percent of
listeners. AM radio has responded by instituting new, non*
music formats such as all-news or all-sports that have
resulted in a further segmentation of the audience. In 1946

there were 1056 AM licenses compared to 288 FM licenses; by
1996 licenses for AM and FM numbered 4872 and 7240,

respectively (Television & Cable Factbook 1997).
As the 1970s advanced, the groundwork for television to

participate in the segmentation of audiences was laid.
Presaging the growth of cable television was the 1963 launch

of Syncom II, the first geosynchronous satellite. Later FCC
decisions, which backed off their earlier position

protecting local "free" broadcasters from cable competition,
opened the door for cable intrusion into metropolitan
markets (Wasko 1994). In 1975 Home Box Office (HBO) began
broadcasting via the Satcom 1 satellite, thus demonstrating

how cable transmission could operate (Wasko 1994). Also in
1976 Ted Turner created the "superstation" concept by taking
his local Atlanta station national using the same Satcom 1
satellite as HBO. In 1979 ESPN came on the air and in 1981
MTV premiered. These two networks featuring all sports and
all music video were the first to truly target a segment of
the audience with their entire programming schedules. By
1979 cable television revenues surpassed $1 billion (Pember
49
1992) and by 1991 this total had passed the $20 billion
mark, basic and pay cable combined (Wasko 1994). It is
anticipated that in 1997 basic cable networks will invest
over $4 billion in original programming (Advertising Acre.
1997b). The rapid growth in cable channels has given us
everything from The Cartoon Network to Knowledge TV, from
America's Health Network to The Military Channel, from
Courtroom Television Network to the Sci-Fi channel. Perhaps

the ultimate comment on the state of cable today is the mere
existence of the Prevue Channel. The sole purpose of this
channel, which claims 42 million subscribers, is to promote
shows on other cable channels by showing video clips and

scrolling updated program listings.
In terms of raw numbers, in 1996 there were 234
national networks using satellites to deliver their signals

to cable subscribers. This number does not include
approximately 25 pay-per-view networks currently operating
or various text services (e.g., ESPN/Sportsticker), nor does
it include the dozens of regional programming networks. Not
surprisingly, but impressive nevertheless, there are over

160 new satellite networks currently being planned and
developed (Television & Cable Factbook 1997).
As the march toward the millennium continues, it is

obvious that this is, indeed, the era of market segmentation
(Pope 1983). While it may not be perfectly clear how we got

here, that we are in fact here is beyond dispute.
50
Richard Tedlow, in his book Key and Improved: The Storv

of Mass Marketing in America (1990) proposes three levels of
segmentation development.
Phase I: Fragmentation - involved small producers
selling low volume output at high margins to restricted
markets. It was a period of geographic segmentation
enforced by the absence of adequate transportation and
communication infrastructure. This period ended around
1880.
Phase II: Unification - was marked by the development,

promotion, and exploitation of mass markets. It
featured large volumes, scale economies, low prices,
and the dominance of national brands.
Phase III: Segmentation - saw the market large enough

to support relatively economical production of
specialized outputs that catered to demographic and
psychographic consumer segments, scale economies,
value-based rather than cost based pricing, high
volume, and demographic and psychographic segmentation
characterize this phase.
Obviously, these phases did not occur contemporaneously

in all industries. As previously noted Ford was adhering to
the unification Phase II, while GM was adopting a Phase III

segmentation strategy in the 1920s and 1930s. Coke was
still in Phase II in the 1960s before Pepsi pushed them and

the entire industry into Phase III.
Hollander and Germain have suggested that Tedlow could

add a fourth phase to his segmentation evolution.
Phase IV: Segment Creation - an active effort to foster
in consumers, or extant consumer segments, an image of
what they ought to be. Part of the image, of course,
includes consumption of the product (1992, 3).
This phase could be described as product positioning,

whereby the product is positioned in consumers' minds as a
means to reach abstract goals and satisfy created wants.
51
Tedlow may well be concurring with this Phase IV
assessment in his statement, "...there was no such thing as
the Pepsi Generation until Pepsi created it" (Tedlow 1990,

372).
Marketing theorists seem to be legitimizing the credo
of Phase IV in their changing definitions of market
segmentation to include the psychological creation of
segments. Segmentation is now viewed as "...the act of
dividing a market into distinct and meaningful groups of
buyers who might merit separate products and/or marketing
mixes” (emphasis added) (Kotler 1980, 294).
After paying lip service to solving consumer problems
and meeting consumer needs, marketing strategists must
acknowledge that, "...the implicit goal of market
segmentation [and segment creation] for a business firm is
to increase profit over what it would be without

segmentation" (Rudelius and Walton 1987, 385).
Segmentation as conceived by Wendell Smith (1956) had
as its essence a concern for consumer needs, the recognition
that individuals and subsets of society have distinctly
different needs than their counterparts comprising other
subsets. The early promises of segmentation maintain that
consumer focus. The reality of segmentation, as it has
evolved, is a much more complicated endeavor. Businesses
choose to segment in relation to competitors in order to
gain a competitive edge, or to survive, as was the case with

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other media attempting to compete with television during its
rapid rise in popularity. It could be argued that
advertising agencies and media segment in order to create
more advertising outlets and thus more opportunities to
generate revenue. Manufacturers, ad agencies and media

conspire to create segments in order to promote greater
consumption.
In an era of created segments, advertising in
conjunction with other elements of the marketing mix becomes

preeminent.
Consider also that as a society the United States is

becoming more fragmented and polarized. A highly fragmented
media tends to lessen our sense of shared cultural

experience. Such workplace trends as time-share, time-
shift, and work-at-home reduce social interactions. An

emphasis on personal, individual gratifications (the 1980s
is commonly described as the "me" decade) over social and
community endeavors increases a sense of isolation. And

finally, income shifts have resulted in the richest one
percent of society gaining significant wealth relative to
the poorest segment of our society and has resulted in a
shrinking of the middle class relative to the rest of the
populace, further polarizing the population (Auchmutey

1985). Such a polarized and fragmented society would seem
ripe for the creation of more and more segments.
53
In the midst of this fragmentation, advertisers have
turned to market research to further define and describe
profitable segments and the research business has expanded
dramatically. Disdaining traditional demographic

descriptors such as gender, age, race and income,
researchers have increasingly delved into psychological and

behavioral arenas to segment society; lifestyles have become
the hot topic of research and psychographics the buzzword of

choice.
Marketing principles today are concerned with broad
cultural issues. The market is conceptualized as dynamic
and malleable (Strasser 1989). Surprisingly, or perhaps
not so surprising upon reflection, this idea of a malleable
market is by no means new. In 1914 Ralph Starr Butler
proclaimed, "The demand for candles is not keeping up with
the increase in population, because newer methods of
illumination are driving candles from the field." In
discussing this phenomenon four years later Butler expressed
his belief that all such new technologies started out as
luxuries, proclaiming that in the beginning there was no
demand for automobiles, phonographs, tractors, or

typewriters.
The far-seeing manufacturer will refuse to limit his

vision to the expressed demand for his product, and
will find in the field that he wishes to cover, if he
will only seek them out, a constantly increasing
number of people to whom his product can be made to
appeal as a necessity (as quoted in Strasser 1989,
159-161).
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Butler fairly concisely states the central precept of
modern marketing: a market not based on supply and demand
but one created by energetic manufacturers/advertisers
dedicated to continuous expansion. Segmentation and product
positioning are intrinsic to the idea of controlling and
benefiting from a malleable market (Strasser 1989).
This chapter has traced the development of market
segmentation in the U.S. during the period 1900 to 1997.

The industrial revolution and the resultant emphasis on
nationally branded products was viewed as a primary
consideration in the evolution of American markets: the
transformation of customers into consumers; advertising's
change in focus from simple announcement to a mandate to
persuade; the growth and increasing sophistication of market
research techniques; the trend from mass to segmented
markets; the discovery that segments could be manufactured

and then appealed to using symbolic and referential
messages; and the resulting emphasis on positioning, rather

than differentiating, products.
In the next chapter the basics of segmentation will be

discussed by examining three different market research
programs used to segment the nation and describe those

segments.
As a prelude, consider the following sermon by Father

Calvin Stanfield in Herman Wouk's Aurora Dawn.
55
"When my pop he said, 'Let a hog in the house and he'll
crawl on yer table,' he wasn't agin' hogs, neither. Fact,
we was all pretty near raised on pork. Pop was jest statin'
a plain fact about hogs. All I aim to do tonight is state
plain facts Signs is like hogs: nobody claims they's
pretty, but everybody knows you gotta have 'em....[this]
sign invaded folks' lives so's they got mad and booted it
out hard, which is what gen'rally happens sooner er later to
a hog in the house. They is some wild-eyed folks likes to
holler, 'Abolish advertisin'.' Shucks, tryin' to stop
advertisin' in this land is like tryin' to stop freckles
with a rubber eraser. Maybe in these here countries where
the gov'ment makes everythin' and hands out everythin' and
runs everythin' they don't have no such problem, but as long
as you got different fellers makin' and sellin' the same
thing and tryin' to beat each other at it yer gonna have 'em
hangin' out signs. That's all advertisin' is, in radio,
magazines, it don't matter none where, it's the same thing -
- hangin' out signs Only thing is, I look around our
land and right now I say we ain't got signs; by and large,
we got a hog in the house." (Wouk 1947, 196-197)
56
CHAPTER III
DESCRIBING SEGMENTS: THREE SYSTEMS
According to my Zip Code, I prefer non-spicy foods,

enjoy tennis more than golf, subscribe to at least one
news-oriented periodical, own between thirty and
thirty-five ties, never buy lemon-scented products, and
have a power tool in my basement, but none of that is
tEtte.
— Cartoon in The New Yorker
Strictly speaking, the 'average American' is a 29-year-
old hermaphrodite (slightly more female than male).
— Barry Tarshis, The "Average American" Book (as
reported in Weiss 1988, 66).
Chapter III will attempt to give the reader some
insight into how marketers segment markets. This process
will be demonstrated by using three popular segmentation
systems as exemplars, describing the different approaches

taken by each system and how the resulting information is
used to describe and appeal to segments. The chapter

concludes by comparing the three systems and discussing how
such systems have altered the focus of segmentation

strategies.
The 1980s saw an increase in the fragmentation of

media. Driven by the growth of cable, media and media
offerings became increasingly specific in terms of their
intended audiences. "Narrowcasting" rather than

broadcasting became the accepted nomenclature for electronic
57
media and was applied as a concept to non-electronic media
as well.
Concurrently, increasing attention was paid to the
fragmentation of and divisions in society. America seemed
"split asunder into innumerable special interests — gray
power, gay power, red power, black power. Sunbelt and
frostbelt, environmentalists and industrialists... all more
aware of their claims on society" (Hapoienu 1981, 36).
Liberals, conservatives, the Moral Majority, Greenpeace,

activists, radicals, couch potatoes, "card carrying member
of the ACLU," baby boomers, under class, over class, ethnic
groups of all kinds (and beware the unaware innocent who
inadvertently refers to any such group using an "incorrect"
label), engineers — domestic, sanitation, consumption; the
ways in which Americans were described, and described
themselves, increased almost daily. Alongside such social
divisions was a growing awareness that America was
undergoing an income polarization creating a greater divide
between the haves and have-nots. American Demographic
reported that the percentage of U.S. families with middle

class incomes dropped from 62.4 percent in 1969 to 55.9 in
1983 (Auchmutey 1985, 16).
An issue pondered by both social critics and marketing

practitioners was the age-old chicken or egg question: Was
media fragmentation a response to, a mirror of, the
divisions occurring in society at large or was the media in
58
some way causing, or at least contributing to these
divisions? Predictably, advertisers viewed media
fragmentation as a response to social fractionalization.
Nor did advertising practitioners see this in a negative
light; rather, they adopted the very utilitarian view that
societal divisions were inevitable and media needed to
respond to these divisions by creating offerings that
catered to such segments.
In order to carry out this mission marketers increased
research efforts on consumers, attempting to uncover even
the most innocuous minutiae of people's lives. Over time
the emphasis of such research efforts focused on AIO —
activities, interests and opinions of the subjects. AIO, or
lifestyle, research attempted to associate or correlate
individual's lifestyles with demographic data.

Joseph Turow (1997) identifies three factors
contributing to the emphasis on lifestyle research, and
ultimately AIO segmentation. 1) Researchers' awareness of
high-profile alternative living options (e.g., hippies,

yippies, etc.) that gained prominence during the 1960s.
Such blatant lifestyle choices drove home the message that
people with similar demographics might have distinct
personality profiles and ways of interacting with the world.
2) The increased sophistication in researchers' statistical
tools. Such tools enabled analysts to correlate
demographic, attitudinal, behavioral and geographic factors
59
to identify clusters of relationships previously undetected.

3) The rise of the computer as a standard business research
tool. Increased affordability and thus accessibility to
computers made it feasible to merge large databases for
marketing purposes and to utilize these newly created files

for all kinds of number-crunching exercises.
No longer dependent on consumer surveys and the
vagaries of response, researchers delved unobtrusively into
files, e.g. credit card records, to determine what consumers
ate, drank, and wore, where they lived, took vacations and
what were their favored leisure activities (Turow 1997).
In this frenzy of data gathering and analysis, various
systems were constructed to make sense of the growing
mountains of information. Three of the most visible systems

to emerge are the Yankelovich Monitor, Claritas
Corporation's PRI2M (Potential Rating Index For Zip
Markets), and SRI International's VALS (Values and
Lifestyles.
The -Xankelovish.Monitor. System
The Yankelovich Monitor is the oldest of the three,
tracing its origin to 1968 and its genesis to the discarding
of a girdle (Smith and Clurman 1997). Yankelovich was a
small research and consulting firm, specializing in the

analysis and forecasting of market and social trends that
could help businesses anticipate the needs of their
60
customers. One of the firm's clients was Playtex and one
day in 1968 the office received a call from the president of

Playtex announcing that his own wife had thrown away her
girdle. Recognizing this as a watershed event, the

president demanded to know, "What does this mean for my
business?" (Smith and Clurman 1997, xii).
In attempting to answer the president of Playtex as
well as understand the changes occurring in society
Yankelovich began studying the values and motivations of

American consumers. in 1971 the firm launched the
Yankelovich Monitor, an annual survey of thousands of
consumers sixteen years of age and older in a nationally

representative sample. Interviewers conduct two-hour
interviews face-to-face in respondents' homes and then leave
extensive questionnaires to be retrieved the following day.
In total, respondents are asked literally hundreds of

questions across a broad range of subjects — government,
advertising, books, education, food, appliances, technology,

environment, finances, pets, charity, family, travel, etc.
In addition to the annual surveys, Monitor maintains a broad

pool of respondents called the CnXn (pronounced
"connection") that have expressed a willingness to respond

to phone surveys throughout the year when Monitor desires to
follow up on specific topics. The result of these yearly
surveys is a longitudinal study tracking trends in all
aspects of consumer life (Smith and Clurman 1997).

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An example of the kinds of discriminations the Monitor
makes is their research on generational segments. It is
claimed that each generation has different and distinct
values, preferences and behaviors that can be used to
predict marketplace activities. Researchers at Yankelovich
have identified three elements that contribute to cohesive
segments within generations. First, life stage, one's life
stage is a combination of age and the physical and
psychological factors that accompany aging. Second, what is
termed current conditions. Current conditions are such
factors as income, taxes, political environment, state of

the economy, technological innovations, etc., that set
parameters within which consumers operate. Third, formative
cohort experiences. Deemed most influential of the three,
formative cohort experiences are those habits, unifying

experiences and perspectives shared by members of a
generation. The combination of the three elements determine
values, preferences and marketplace behaviors of consumers.
Based on the Monitor data, the market is divided into

three broad generations — Matures, Boomers and Xers.
Matures, born between 1909 and 1945 came of age during
the Great Depression, World war II, Korea and the Cold War.
Their core values are what might be termed as traditional —
discipline, self-denial, hard work, obedience to authority,

and financial and social conservatism.
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Boomers (Baby Boomers), b o m between 1946 and 1964 were
raised during the prosperous times of the postwar economic
expansion. They take for granted employment and educational
opportunities and presume continued economic expansion.
Boomers, commonly called the "me generation" tend toward
self-absorption and the pursuit of personal goals and

instant gratification.
Xers (Generation X) have been dubbed the "Why Me?"
generation. Born in the wake of the most populous
generation, the Boomers, Xers have experienced tumultuous

political and economic times. They are wary and uncertain
about America yet, contrary to much that has been written
and said about them, this generation is savvy,
enthusiastically ready, willing and able to face the future.

Table l gives a thumbnail sketch of the three dominant
generations.
Proponents of this type of generational analysis are at

pains to point out other types of demographic and economic
factors should be considered when making business decisions

about consumer segments. But they argue that "each
generation is driven by unique ideas about the lifestyle to

which it aspires" and that it is critical for marketers to
know "... the mind-set of the generation to which your

customers belong" (Smith and Clurman 1997, xiv). This point
is illustrated by two examples. In the 1950s when Betty
Crocker introduced a line of completely ready-to-bake cake
63
TABLE 1. Brief Generation Descriptions

MATURES BOOMERS Xers
Defining idea... Duty Individuality Diversity

Celebrating.... Victory Youth Savvy
Success because. Fought hardWere born, Have two jobs
and won therefore should
be a winner
Style.......... Team player Self-absorbed Entrepreneur
Rewards because. You've You deserve it You need it
earned it
Work is........ An inevi An exciting A difficult
table adventure challenge
obligation
Surprises in Some good, All good Avoid it —
life........... some bad all bad
Leisure is..... Reward for The point of Relief
hard work life
Education is.... A dream A birthright A way to get
ahead
Future......... Rainy day "Mow" is more Uncertain but
to work for important manageable
Managing money.. Save Spend Hedge
"Program" means. Social Cult de Software
program programmers programs
Go watch....... "The Best "The Big Chill" "Reality
Years of Our Bites"
Lives"
Source: Yankelovich Monitor (as reported in Smith and
Clurman 1997).
mixes, sales were disappointing. The 1950s were
characterized by stay-at-home mothers, part of the Matures
generation. To Matures hard work was a virtue, anything too

easy was suspect. Their job was to care for their families
and convenience seemed like cheating, cutting corners

indicated a lack of quality and consequently a failure to
provide the best for one's family. After ascertaining this

mindset, Betty Crocker reintroduced the cake mixes modified
to require cooks to add an egg to the mix. This apparently
64
satisfied the work ethic of the mothers of the time and the
reintroduced cake mixes were a success.
A more recent example is Seagram's experience with
falling whiskey sales in the 1970s. The root cause of the
decreased sales was that Boomers were not drinking as much
as their parents. The reason? Apparently, the Boomers were

too impatient to develop a taste for scotch; they were
willing to imbibe they just wanted something easier to

drink. Seagram responded by emphasizing white spirits, like
vodka, that can be mixed with juices or sodas thus
accommodating untrained tastebuds. Vodka did not demand an
acquired taste.
Without belaboring the point, tables 3, 4, 5 and 6

indicate areas of difference among generations, speak to the
level of detail that Monitor attains, and demonstrates the
inferential nature of some of the analyses (source of all
charts and statistics in the subsequent discussion of
Monitor: Smith and Clurman 1997). Of particular interest,

but not clear from the data, is the extent to which
generation members describe themselves, as compared to
having themselves described by Monitor analysts. Some of

the references are esoteric, leading one to believe that
they may be more about assisting researchers in
understanding, or compartmentalizing, generations rather
than descriptors of widely held beliefs among generation

members.
65
Table 2. Generational Remembrances
Orange juice The Juice runs The Juice walks

FDR Mixon Reagan
Flattops HAIR Skinheads
Mo more butter Mo more war Mo more ozone
layer
Sunday drives Drive-thrus Drive-bys
Mom, Dad, Grandma, Mom and Dad Mom or Dad
Grandpa
Dr. Spock Dr. Strangelove Dr. Kevorkian
The Golden Rule Do bees and Just say no
don't bees
Red Square Berlin Wall Chernobyl
Pan Am Clipper Fleet Pan Am Shuttle Lockerbie
Electric chair No death penalty Lethal injection
"How to Win Friends "I'm Okay, You're "Men Are from
and Influence Okay" Mars, Women Are
People" from Venus"
"Are you now or "What's your sign?" "Boxers or
have you ever been.. n briefs?"
Table 3. The "In" Crowd
Rat Pack "Leader of the Pack" The Brat Pack

Nightclubs Rock clubs Rave clubs
Hep Groovy Edgy
Zoot suit Bell-bottoms Flannel
Vegas Flamingo Vegas MGM Grand Vegas Hard Rock
Kansas City San Francisco Seattle
Jazz Rock 'n' Roll Alternative
Table 4. Technologies to Remember

Slide rules Calculators Spreadsheets
Mimeographing Photocopying Desktop publishing
Outer space Inner space Cyberspace
IBM Apple Netscape
Rotary phones Touch-tone phones Cell phones
"Spirit of St. Louis" Concorde Columbia
Party lines Conference calls Chat rooms
66
Table 5. Remember When

Air raids Panty raids Fear of AIDS

Packing the court "Divorce Court" "Peoples Court”
R.F.D. Suburbs Exurbs
Yellow brick road "A Clockwork Orange" Blue M&M's
Marx Brothers Smothers Brothers Menendez brothers
Hobos Hitchhikers Homeless
"The Grapes of Wrath" Strawberry Fields Smashing Pumpkins
Table 6. On the Edge

IWW SDS Earth FirstI

"I Like Ike" "Make Love, Not War" "Fight the Power"
Playtex girdle Burning bras Wonderbra
Blacklist Enemies list "Schindler's List"
Save the world Save the country Save yourself
The sheer quantity of information contained in the
Monitor data and its related aspects is impressive. For
example, you want to know the percentage of people who are

channel surfers? In 1996 among Matures 36 percent of men
and 22 percent of women were channel surfers. For Boomers
the percentages were 53 for men and 35 for women, for Xers
60 percent of the males and 46 percent of the females were
channel surfers.
Another function of the Monitor surveys is to track

attitudes over time. For instance, as women have become
more of a presence in the workplace, Monitor has tracked

attitudes about this trend. In 1973, 36 percent of Matures
strongly favored accepting women in the workplace, compared

with 47 percent of Boomers. In 1995 the percentages were 50
67
for Matures, 60 for Boomers and 61 for Xers. other trends
highlight a lack of trust among Americans. In 1972, 80
percent of all consumers reported a great deal of confidence
in the advice they got from doctors. By 1994 that trust had
eroded to 53 percent. Media institutions have tumbled from
percentages in the fifties and sixties to the teens and low
twenties; religious leaders and educational institutions
have dropped from the forties and fifties to the low
twenties. Corporations, salespeople and advertisers
currently sit in the single digits, counterintuitively,
consumers are expressing an increase in brand loyalty. Over
70 percent of consumers say that once they have found a
brand they like, it will be difficult to induce them to

change.
How does all this information translate into marketing
action? Consider the combination of distrust and proclivity
for brand loyalty just cited. One reading of this data is

that consumers are willing to be loyal but the relationship
between brand and customer must be reciprocal. Rather than
the brand determining the terms of the relationship, the
interaction must be a two way communication. For example,
Prudential used to have as its tag line, "Own a piece of the
rock." The implication was, come to Prudential to get a

piece of the good life. Today Prudential says, "Be your own
rock." You don't have to come to Prudential, Prudential

will come to you. Another example is the IBM campaign,
68
"Solutions for a snail planet." The nessage is that IBM can
provide solutions no matter what the needs.
One can see how this information is utilized by
marketers. Obviously, advertising targeting different
segments will portray values consistent with those expressed
by that segment. Boomers value convenience. Matures

stability, Xers tend put more weight in brands' ability to
confer status, exclusivity or cachet. As one Coca-Cola
executive explained how the Coke brand was portrayed to
consumers, "No longer does Coca-Cola have just one ad
campaign; it has twenty, or more. The company has moved
away from forcing consumers to relate to it in just one way
through a single ad campaign. Now Coca-Cola offers many
different ways for consumers to relate to it. Consumers can
pick the one that works best for what they want" (Smith and
Clurman 1997, 284).
The Yankelovich Monitor utilizes its data for
segmentation efforts different from the generational
emphasis discussed herein. It also has described many sub-
segments within the broad generations described above. But
the underlying premise of Monitor's segmentation and
research agenda remain basically the same as described. An
additional function of Monitor's longitudinal data is to
identify trends and anticipate future consumer attitudes.
The following predictions about beauty were made using the
Monitor generational information data base.
1
i
»
J ______________________
69
Attitudes about beauty will be driven by two
generational factors: One, the aging of the Boomers who will
be forced to change their attitudes as they are confronted
with their own aging; and two, the emergence of Xers much
more influenced by a diversity of cultural factors. New
standards of beauty will manifest themselves in several

ways.
- Age will be beautiful. Youth will be less celebrated
as the majority of the population moves into middle and
elderly age brackets. Further, young people of today, more
than any previous generation have rejected a celebration of
beauty, at least as most of us understand the concept, in
favor of the stark, ragged extremes of thinness, grunge,

piercings and body art.
- Comfort will be beautiful. More and more people will
be interested in feeling good rather than looking good.

Increasingly consumers will reject the trade-offs to achieve
beauty; if it takes a lot of work to achieve, then consumers
will decide it is not worth the effort. Keeping up with the

latest styles will be less of a motivational factor than in
the past.
- Beauty will by polychromatic. The marketplace has
moved away from uniformity, no one style rules. Ethnic
styles will represent a new influence and cross-gender
styles will also be a big factor (Smith and Clurman 1997,
301-302.)
(
i
i
j
j
70
Claritas.* PRIZM. system
Unlike Monitor, the PRIZM system does not measure
values or attitudes. Rather it is primarily driven by
demographics supplemented by lifestyle data, e.g.,
consumption and media usage. The basic premise of PRIZM is

that "...Americans live in distinctive community types,
refusing to blend into the mythical melting pot" (Weiss
1988, 2). In other words, "You are where you live..."
(Weiss 1988, 3). Called neighborhood clusters, the thesis
of this typology is that inhabitants of a given cluster tend
to lead similar lives, have similar tastes, participate in
similar activities; in short, each cluster has a personality
of its own and these "personalities" are distinctly
different from cluster to cluster, in total, PRIZM has
identified 40 cluster types spread over the entire United
States. If one were to map the locations of the various
clusters the resulting distribution would ” ...resemble a
vast patchwork quilt cut from forty pieces of cloth" (Weiss

1988, 7). of interest in the quilt analogy is the
implication, in fact the assertion, that whereas clusters

are distinct each cluster is not unique to a location. A
cluster type may be found in Portland, Oregon, and identical
clusters may be found in Phoenix, Arizona, and Lincoln,
Nebraska, and Washington D.C. Table 7 lists all 40 PRIZM

clusters.
71
Table 7. PRIZM Geodemographic Clusters
Blue Blood Estates Money & Brains Furs & Station Wagons
Urban Gold Coast Pools & Patios Two More Rungs
Young Influentials Young Suburbia God's Country
Blue-Chip Blues Bohemian Mix Levittown, U.S.A.
Gray Power Black Enterprise New Beginnings
Blue-Collar Nursery New Homesteaders New Melting Pot
Towns & Gowns Rank & File Middle America
Shotguns & Pickups Golden Ponds Agri-Business
Emergent Minorities Old Yankee Rows Coalburg & Corntown
Single City Blues Mines & Mills Back-Country Folks
Norma Rae-Ville Grain Belt Smalltown Downtown
Heavy Industry Share Croppers Downtown Dixie style
Hispanic Mix Tobacco Roads Hard Scrabble
Public Assistance
Source: Claritas Corp.
Table 7 generally lists the PRIZM clusters in rank
order of socioeconomic status, reading from left to right
across the columns. So, "Blue Blood Estates" represent

America's wealthiest neighborhoods, "Public Assistance" are
the nation's poorest.
Thumbnail sketches of six selected clusters follow.

These six clusters represent a cross-section of
socioeconomic status from the wealthy to middle class to the
impoverished. (Source for all sketches: Claritas Corp. as
reported in Weiss 1988; and Hawkins, Best, and Coney 1989.
Household percentages are based on 1987 census block groups
and estimated to the closest 0.1 percent.) For sketches of

all 40 clusters see Appendix A.
Money & Brains:

Have the nation's second highest socioeconomic rank.
Posh big-city enclaves of townhouses, condos and apartments.
This group has relatively few children and is dominated by
childless couples and a mix of upscale singles. They are
sophisticated consumers of adult luxuries — apparel,
72
restaurants, travel, etc. Represents 0.9 percent of U.S.

households.
Urban Gold Coast:

Upscale urban high-rise districts. It is the most
densely populated per square nile, with the highest
concentration of one-person households in multi-unit, high-
rise buildings, and the lowest incidence of auto ownership.
Other mosts: most white collar, nost childless, and most New
York. Represents 0.5 percent of U.S. households.
Towns & Gowns:
America's college towns. The population is three
quarters local ("towns” ) to one quarter students ("gowns"),
giving this cluster its name and unique profile. It shows
extreme concentrations of age 18-24 singles and students in
group quarters, very high educational, professional, and
technical levels, and a taste for prestige products in
contrast with modest income and home values. Represents 1.2
percent of U.S. households.
Shotguns & Pickups:

Aggregates hundreds of small, outlying townships and
crossroad villages which serve the nation's breadbasket and
other rural areas. It has a more easterly distribution and
shows peak indices for large families with school-age
children headed by blue collar craftsmen, equipment
operators and transport workers with high school educations.
These areas are home to many dedicated outdoorsmen.
Represents 1.9 percent of U.S. households.
Norma Rae-Ville:
Lower-middle-class milltowns and industrial suburbs,
primarily located in the South with its geo-center in the
Appalachian and Piedmont regions. They are country folk
with minimal educations, a high index for blacks, and lead
the nation in nondurable manufacturing. Represents 2.3
Hard Scrabble:
These neighborhoods represent our poorest rural areas,
from Appalachia to the Ozarks, Mexican border country, and
the Dakota Bad Lands. Hard Scrabble leads all other
clusters in concentration of adults with less than eight
years of education and trails all other clusters in
concentration of working women. Represents 1.5 percent of
U.S. households.
To flesh out the vague stereotypes presented in the
cluster profiles above, additional data is correlated from a
73
variety of sources: the U.S. Census Bureau, Simmons Market
Research Bureau, Mediamark Research, Inc. and R.L. Polk;

political polls conducted by Targeting systems, Inc.; and
scores of interviews with residents of representative
cluster communities (Weiss 1988, 268). Tables 8 and 9
present a compilation of the information gathered on one of

the cluster types, Urban Gold Coast, and is representative
of the detail compiled on all the various clusters
Table 8. Urban Gold Coast: Demographics
Thumbnail Demographics
0.5 percent of U.S. households upscale urban enclaves

Primary age groups: 18-24 and 65+ high-rise housing
Median household income: $36,838 predominantly white
Median home value: $200,000+ singles
college educations
white collar jobs
Politics
Predominant ideology: liberal/moderate

1984 presidential vote: Mondale (60%)
Key issues: trade protection, jobs
Sample Neighborhoods
Upper East Side, Manhattan, NY (10021)

Upper West Side, Manhattan, NY (10024)
West End, Washington, D.C. (20037)
Fort Dearborn, Chicago, IL (60611)
Rincon East, San Francisco, CA (94111)
Source: Weiss 1988, 279-280.
Urban Gold Coast is focused in a handful of big cities
and of all the clusters is the most densely populated, most
employed, most white collar, most renters, most childless

and most New York-based. Conversely, they have the lowest
74
Table 9. Urban Gold Coast: Lifestyle Indexes*
High Usage Index Low Usage Index
Travel by railroad 1504 Powerboats 0

Aperitif/specialty wines 1243 Groin irritation remedies 0
Imported champagne 657 Feminine hygiene sprays 13
Car rentals 529 Nonfilter cigarettes 17
Valid passports 471 Fishing rods 19
U.S. Treasury notes 389 Tupperware 23
Tennis 388 Bicycles 27
Pregnancy tests 378 Motorcycles 28
Magaz ines/Newspapers
"New York" 5015 "Motorcyclist" 0
"The New York Times" 3063 "Popular Hot Rodding 0
"Metropolitan Home" 2227 "Hunting" 0
"Atlantic Monthly" 1756 "Car Craft" 0
Cars
Rolls Royces 352 Chevrolet Novas 1
Jaguars 193 Chevrolet Sprints 1
BMW 5 Series 181 Bertone X 19s 0
Ferraris 172 Mercury Sables 0
Mercedes 380/500/560S 170 Oldsmobile Omegas 0
Food
Rye/pumpernickel bread 374 Pork sausages 35
Tomato/vegetable juice 150 TV dinners 26
Butter 129 Canned corned-beef hash 24
Fresh chicken 124 Canned meat spreads 0
Television
"Nightline" 154 "Lifestyles of the Rich
"Late Night With David and Famous" 35
Letterman" 152 "Simon and Simon" 30
"At the Movies" 117 "General Hospital" 28
"Entertainment Tonight" 117 "Dance Fever" 0
Index numbers indicate percentages of people in each
category, indexed against the national average. An index of
100 eguals the U.S. average for that category. An index of
200 means a cluster has twice the national average for that
category.
Source: Weiss 1988, 279-280.
incidence of car ownership. Residents usually eat out for
lunch and dinner so grocery shopping mostly yields breakfast
l
i
75
items: yogurt, butter, orange juice and English muffins —
all bought at slightly above average rates. These consumers
excel at the liguor store: they buy imported champagnes,
brandy, beer and table wine at twice the national norm.

Politically, Urban Gold Coast is hone to the nation's
limousine liberals, the premier cluster of left-wing causes
and Democratic fund-raising. They support the Democratic
party's stand on civil liberties, liberal foreign policies

and religious pluralism. With nearly a third of its
households Jewish, Urban Gold Coast opposes the influence of
the religious right on the GOP more than any other cluster
(Weiss 1988, 278-281).
PRIZM has cross-referenced their neighborhood clusters

with the U.S. Postal Service's zip code system so that for
every one of America's 36,000 residential zip codes they

know the corresponding PRIZM cluster. Thus, identify a zip
code and PRIZM will tell you "who" lives there. It is a
relatively simple step for PRIZM to further cross-reference
media markets and product usage. For example, returning to

the cola wars previously discussed, PRIZM informs us that
coke drinkers are more heavily concentrated in the South,

while Pepsi drinkers are better represented in midwestern
industrial cities. Interestingly, according to PRIZM, more

people buy Pepsi-Cola but Coca-Cola sells more because Coke
drinkers consume more of their brand. The top five clusters
for each brand are presented in Table 10 (numbers represent
A ____________________
76
the sane index scheme as utilized in Table 9; does not
include diet brands).
Table 10. Cola Wars

Coca-Cola £es&JL=£9la
Hard Scrabble 174 Hard Scrabble 162
Tobacco Roads 133 Norma Rae-Ville 124
Downtown Dixie-Style 119 Blue-Collar Nursery 120
Smalltown Downtown 117 Nines & Mills 117
Share Croppers 116 Coalburg & Comtown 116
Source: Claritas Corp., 1987 (as reported in Weiss 1988,

19).
It should be obvious how this system can be used by
marketers, advertisers and media. So, let us move on to the

last system to be discussed: Values and Lifestyles (VALS).
SRI International's VALS
Perhaps the most famous of lifestyle and psychographic

research tools currently available, the VALS program
systematically classifies American adults into nine distinct
value and lifestyle patterns. Grounded in the theoretical
base of Haslow's (1954) hierarchy of needs and the concept

of social character (Riesman, Denney, and Glazer 1950), VALS
uses survey questions to classify respondents. These
questions include various specific and general attitude

statements and several demographic items (Kahle, Beatty, and
Homer 1986). Because of the proprietary nature of the
typology, exactly how many questions are used as well as the
specific questions asked and how they are analyzed is
77
unclear. However, it is known that the system relies on a
national probability sample of Americans and their

spouses/mates (Kahle, Beatty, and Homer 1986). Others have
shed light on different aspects of the methods, analyses and
uses of the data (see e.g., Atlas 1984; Daugherty 1981;
Holman 1984; Mitchell 1983; Thomas and Crocker 1981; and
Townsend 1985). VALS corporate clients include AT&T, New
York Times, Penthouse. Atlantic Richfield, and Boeing.
Brief sketches of the nine values and lifestyle
patterns cure as follows.
Sustfriiiexs
Individuals in this group are struggling on the edge of

poverty. They are relatively young with many female,
single heads of households. This group comprises seven
percent of the U.S. population but accounts for only
three percent of U.S. spending.
-Values: Somewhat optimistic but feel left out; feel

things are changing too fast. Agree with the
statement, "I sun a bit of a swinger." Feel social
status is important.
-Activities: Football, basketball, baseball, bowling,
fishing, listen to music, drink hard liquor, attend
discos.
-Media: Game shows, comedies, outdoor shows, soap

operas, reading tabloids.
-Buying style: Basic needs, localized outlets, erratic

patterns, time payments.
Survivors
Typically older (median age 66) and poor this group is

far removed from the cultural mainstream. Survivors
represent four percent of the U.S. population and one
percent of all spending.
78
-Values: Suspicious, discontented, pessimistic, home-

focused, conservative, lack self-confidence,
unsatisfied.
-Activities: Virtually none beyond mass media, family

and peer interaction.
-Media: Heavy television viewing, particularly game

shows, and some tabloid readership.
-Buying style: Cautious, price, brand names,

guarantees, reassurances.
Achievers
These are leaders in business, professions, and

government. Efficiency, fame, status, the good life,
comfort, and materialism are hallmarks of the
Achievers. They have a high median household income
and a median age of 42. This group makes up 20 percent
of the U.S. population but accounts for 41 percent of
the annual dollars spent.
-Values: Success/fame, puritan ethic, materialism,

efficiency, dominant, comfort, contented, self-
confident, deliberate.
-Activities: Golf, cultural events, adult education,

drinks before dinner, spectator sports, pleasure
travel.
-Media: Limited television, heavy newspaper, news, and

business magazine readership.
-Buying styles: Originators, luxury, top of life,

technology.
Emulators
This group aspires to be Achievers. Median age of 28,

their attempts to imitate the Achievers often fail
because they lack the skills, background, training and
resources. Emulators represent eight percent of the
U.S. population and ten percent of total U.S. spending.
-Values: Status, display, aspiring, manipulative,
competitive, optimistic, conventional in most areas
but liberal on sex and drugs, little self-confidence.
79
-Activities: Golf, spectator sports, drinks before

dinner, pleasure travel.
-Media: Limited television except comedies, reads
newspapers and business magazines.
-Buying styles: Conspicuous, in vogue, extremes,

overstatement.
PglQflger?
They are traditional, conservative, nostalgic and
unexperimental. Homebodies. Belongers are the
traditional mass market and often the silent majority
who would rather fit in them stand out. Their median
age is 54. Belongers make up 39 percent of the U.S.
population and represent 27 percent of U.S. annual
spending.
-Values: Fitting in, conventional, group membership,

tradition, nostalgia, reliable, home focused, family
oriented, contented though somewhat pessimistic.
-Activities: Limited activities — fishing, gardening,
and collecting recipes are popular.
-Media: Watch game shows and the news, read tabloids.

-Buying style: Popularity, stable/mass market, brand
names, made in America, convenience.
Societallv Conscious
These individuals have a high sense of social

responsibility that leads them to support such causes
as conservation and environmentalism. They are
attracted to simple living and smallness of scale.
They want to pursue lives that conserve, protect and
heal. Their median age is 38. Societally Conscious
consumers make up ll percent of the population and
eight percent of total spending.
-Values: Socially responsible, voluntary simplicity,

inner growth, small scale, somewhat optimistic,
liberal, very pro women's rights, experimental,
individualistic, self-confident, not status conscious.
-Activities: Swimming, sailing, writing, attending
cultural events, library, adult education, travel.
80
•'Media: Educational television and late news,

magazines, particularly literary.
-Buying style: Conservation, authenticity,

nonconsumption, health-conscious, not brand focused,
complain when dissatisfied.
Experientials
Desire direct experience and vigorous involvement.

Experientials are artistic, experimental, and
participative. The experiential life is a light show
at one moment and introspection the next. They are
typically in their mid-twenties. Experientials make up
six percent of the U.S. population and account for five
percent of total spending.
-Values: Direct experience, participative, hedonistic,

intuitive, believe in "inner self," optimistic, like
to party, like change, liberal, support women's
rights, happy.
-Activities: All active sports, camping, backpacking,

chess, backgammon, writing, cultural events, concerts,
dancing, meditation, poker, adult education, travel.
-Media: Read books, literary and news magazines,

limited television.
-Buying style: Making, doing, crafts, health conscious,

not brand loyal, quality concerned.
I-Am-Me
The I-Am-Me's are zippy, dramatic, impulsive, fiercely

individualistic, and profoundly intuitive. In many
instances they will be the fashion innovators and the
ones most likely to set new trends. They are younger
(median age 21) high-energy people. They represent
three percent of the population and two percent of
total spending.
-Values: Experimental, self-expressive, impulsive,

individualistic, optimistic, love to party, like
change, low family focus, liberal, happy.
-Activities: All active sports, all outdoor activities,

painting, writing, chess, billiards, concerts, discos,
poker, eating out, second job, pleasure travel,
movies.
81
-Media: Late night television, comedies, sports

magaz ines, radio.
-Buying style: Display, fad, clique, far-out,

convenience.
integrated
This lifestyle group combines the outwardness
components of the Achievers, Emulators and Belongers
and the sensitivity and introspectiveness of the
Societally Conscious, Experientials and i-Am-Mes. They
are focused on self-actualization. They are concerned
with both personal development and the world around
them. They are the highest in education and have a
median age of 40. They make up two percent of the U.S.
population and spend three percent of all dollars
spent.
-Values: Maturity, individualism, tolerance, world

view, compromise, self-confidence, and wisdom.
-Buying style: Ecology, quality, esthetics, the unique,

and high standards.
Because this group comprises such a small percentage of

the population and because they are so highly diverse a
meaningful portrayal of their activities and media
preferences is not practical (Hawkins, Best, and Coney
1989).
Tables 11 compares various demographic and attitudinal
characteristics across lifestyle categories. Table 12 looks

at their media usage patterns.
SRI groups its nine lifestyle segments into a three

tiered hierarchy: The base of the model is what is described
as Need-driven and consists of the Sustainers and Survivors

lifestyle categories; the mid-section of the hierarchy is
composed of two groups — Outer-directed and Inner-directed.
The Outer-directed group is composed of the Achievers,

Emulators and Belongers groups, the Inner-directed includes
82
Table 11. Demographics and Attitudes of

SRI VALS Lifestyle Categories
Believe a Believe Believe

Lifestyle Millions Woman's People Industrial
Categories of Median Place is in are Growth Should
Adults Age. _ _the_ Home Honest Be Limited
Achievers 32 42 16% 50% 8%
Emulators 13 28 9 22 16
Belongers 63 54 34 51 16
Societally 18 38 2 37 18
Conscious
Experiential 10 27 5 44 25
I-Am-Me 5 21 7 35 18
Sustainers 11 32 32 22 18
Survivors 6 66 46 28 21
Source: Thomas and Crocker 1981, 16-18.
Table 12. Media Usage Patterns of SRI VALS

Lifestyle Categories
IBagfiL = .100}
TY_ Eragrams- watched Reaulady.
Lifestyle Game Early Evening Late Eve. News
Catecrories Comedies Shows News (5-7PM1 f10PM or later)
Achievers 67 42 98 102
Emulators 152 108 79 88
Belongers 86 158 121 110
Societally 67 50 96 115
Conscious
Experiential 138 42 72 90
I-Am-Me 176 17 47 55
Sustainers 195 225 87 115
Survivors 67 233 126 93
Magazine Readershio^
Lifestyle Bus. News General
Categories Tabloids Mags Mags Soorts Literarv
Achievers 53 186 129 100 100
Emulators 106 36 76 121 43
Belongers 129 100 74 68 57
Societally 47 157 147 110 200
Conscious
Experiential 59 114 132 132 200
I-Am-Me 100 100 132 195 71
Sustainers 247 64 62 79 129
Survivors 118 36 56 0 86
vr------------ r— ——
*One or more of the last four issues.
Source: Thomas and Crocker 1981, 26-27
83
the Societally conscious, Experientials and I-Am-Me groups.
Finally, the uppermost tier is the Integrated category.
Implicit in this hierarchical model is the assumption that
those lower in the hierarchy will aspire to move up to the

next level.
VALS can obviously be used to segment markets, position

products and structure advertising. For example, the
Merrill Lynch campaign, "Bullish on America," while a
popular and memorable ad, was a technical error. Although
their intended target was Achievers, the ad appealed more to
Belongers. Given the conservative, unexperimental values of
Belongers, they are unlikely to be heavy speculators in the

stock market. Merrill Lynch's shift from "Bullish on
America" to "A Breed Apart" was a repositioning to appeal
more to the values and lifestyle of Achievers (Atlas 1984).
A second example is Clairol's involvement with Reader's
Digest. Clairol was reluctant to advertise because they
were convinced that the readers of Reader's Digest were
stodgy, middle-aged housewives. However, Reader's Digest
demonstrated to Clairol that its readership was definitely
outer-directed, with a strong Belonger component. With this
and other VALS information, Clairol structured ad copy with

an outer-directed theme and placed the ads with Reader's
Digest (Atlas 1984).
84
Concluding Co— ents
This brief discussion of three well-known segmentation
systems should serve to illustrate four critical points.
First, while values and lifestyles — psychographics — are
currently the preeminent paradigm for segmenting
populations, how one goes about collecting, analyzing and
interpreting data is far from an exact science. Monitor

tends to focus on trends and how disparate groups react to
social changes. Monitor not only tries to describe current
consumer behavior it tries to predict future behaviors.
PRIZM engages in what has been termed geo-lifestyle or
geodemographic analysis. This place-based determinist
approach is an essentially different analysis involving
different assumptions than either Monitor or VALS. VALS,
while seemingly similar to Monitor, is a significantly more
statistically oriented approach which more heavily weighs

attitudes, values and life-style behaviors cross-referenced
with demographic factors such as age, income and gender than
generational commonalities, except as such generational
references are captured by other factors.
Second, while the systems discussed are popular among
marketers and industry, they are not necessarily

representative and certainly not inclusive of all the
segmentation/research activities being carried out by
advertisers, marketers, business and media. The largest and
probably most influential research company is undoubtedly A.
85
C. Nielsen with hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S.
revenue alone. Despite all the hoopla about the rise of

cable and the eroding network audience, network television
still g a m e r s the majority of audiences and Nielsen still is
the major player in terms of television ratings. During the

1980s Nielsen came under increased scrutiny and criticism
not only in terms of suspect raw numbers but in the lack of
descriptiveness of audiences. Even mass market network
television (and their advertisers) demanded to know WHO was

watching what.
Third, while segmentation systems compete amongst
themselves for clients and acknowledgement and while

defenders of one system level criticisms at competing
systems, no one in the industry questions the necessity of
the systems themselves. The cumulative picture painted of

an increasingly fragmented and fractious society made up of
distrustful, individualistic, self-indulgent individuals is
not challenged within the industry: rather, such a chaotic

scene is viewed as full of potential for profitable
enterprise.
Finally, product positioning rather than product

utilities derived from special features appears to be the
dominant function of these research/segmentation activities.

Rather than identifying a segment and creating a product
that fills an unmet need of the segment, the approaches

described appear to be more about understanding
86
psychological influences that will allow the advertiser to
design appeals consistent with the values and desires of the

target audience. Daniel Pope describes the resulting ads as
"user centered" appeals where much of the persuasion has
nothing to do with the product advertised; instead the
appeal is in the context and what is being sold is a sense

of belonging or a state of being desired by the consumer
(1983, 280). To return to the Pepsi Generation example
discussed previously, the campaign begs the guestion: What
possible connection could this "generation" have to do with
a soft drink? The answer is that Pepsi was not trying to
tell customers anything about the product. It was trying to

tell customers about themselves (Tedlow 1990).
According to Tedlow, the type of segmentation
exemplified by the Pepsi Generation campaign is a new

phenomenon.
Segmentation based not on logistics or on some genuine

product characteristics but on demographic and
psychographic groupings carved out of the general
population is an invention of late twentieth-century
American marketing.
The old fragmentation was based on realities, but this

new segmentation springs wholly from the imagination of
the marketer. Pepsi and other such companies have been
more interested in the term segment as a verb than as a
noun. They have segmented markets, rather than merely
responded to a market segment that already existed
(Tedlow 1990, 371—372).
It would seem that much of the function of segmentation
systems we have examined is consistent with the idea of
segment as verb rather than as noun.
87
CHAPTER IV
MARKET SEGMENTATION: SOCIETAL EFFECTS
I'll tell you a secret about the soap business, Mr.

Norman. There's no damn difference between soaps.
Except for perfume and color, soap is soap. Oh, maybe
we got a few manufacturing tricks, but the public don't
give a damn about that. But the difference you see is
in the selling and advertising. He sell soap twice as
fast as our nearest competitor because we outsell and
out-advertise 'em.
— Evan Llewelyn Evans to Victor Norman in
the movie, "The Hucksters" (1946).
People don't drink the beer, they drink the

advertising.
— Charlotte Beers (as reported in Newsweek 1993,
51).
Chapter 4 contends that segmentation has departed from

its reactive, market demand roots and has embarked on a
strategy of proactive product positioning. In this

incarnation segmentation has basically abandoned the
benefits promised consumers in order to maximize benefits to
business. In so doing consumers have been relegated to a
position equivalent to other elements of the marketing mix;

to be manipulated just as are product, price, distribution
and promotion. These manipulations, or influences, are

particularly evident in advertising's attempts to increase
both generic demand and demand for specific brands; in

market research's invasion of individual privacy; and in the
fragmentation of both media and markets, all of which are
88
discussed subsequently. The chapter ends with a quasi-case
study of the environment: how segmentation both encourages
environmental degradation and dictates business responses to
ecological concerns.
Market segmentation has an intuitive appeal to American
consumers because it offers prima facie subservience to the
cherished ideal of individualism. Americans believe they
are different, a nation of rugged individualists, each
separate but equal under the law. Segmentation implicitly
promises to treat consumers as customers, as individuals
with distinct needs, desires and requirements of the
marketplace.
Segmentation is based upon developments on the demand

side of the market and represents a rational and more
precise adjustment of product and marketing effort to
consumer or user requirements (emphasis added). In
the language of the economist, segmentation is
disa.ggrega.tive in its effects and tends to bring about
recognition of several demand schedules where only one
was recognized before (Smith 1956, 5).
By the 1980s segmentation had transmogrified from a
demand response to a proactive strategy, from a noun to a

verb.
The book Market Segmentation: Using Demographics.
Psvchooraphics and other Segmentation Techniques to Uncover
and Exploit Mew Markets (emphasis added) highlights this
change in focus by identifying the four major benefits of
market segmentation.
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1. Designing responsive products to meet the needs of

the marketplace. Through researching customer
preferences the company moves toward accomplishing
the marketing concept (customer satisfaction at a
profit). The firm places the customer first and
designs and refines its product and service mix to
satisfy the needs of the market.
2. Determining effective and cost efficient promotional

strategies. As a planning tool, segmentation
identification and analysis is extremely valuable in
developing the firm's communication mix.
Appropriate advertising campaigns can be designed
and targeted to the right media vehicles.
3. Evaluating market competition, in particular the

company's market position. A segmentation study
explores the firm's market position — how the
company is perceived by its customers and potential
customers relative to the competition.
4. Providing insight on present marketing strategies.

It is important to periodically reevaluate your
present marketing strategies to try to capitalize on
new opportunities and circumvent potential threats
(Weinstein 1987, 11).
T. P. Beane (1987) more succinctly identifies three
benefits, or goals, of market segmentation: 1) To seek new
product opportunities; 2) to identify areas (segments)
receptive to product positioning; and 3) to create improved

(more effective) advertising messages.
Weinstein's "benefits” would seem to be heavily

weighted toward business. Benefit number one would seem to
cater to both consumers and business. Benefit number two

could also be of benefit to consumers in the case of
segmentation based on logistics or discrete product
characteristics; advertising placed in appropriate media
will assist those who need to receive the information.
However, in cases where businesses are seeking to position
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their products to cater to created segments, benefit two is
essentially a business asset. It is a mystery how benefits
three and four will meaningfully promote the stated

marketing concept (customer satisfaction at a profit).
Beane makes no pretense of benefiting consumers except as an

incidental byproduct.
It would seem that as segmentation has evolved from the
reactive (market demand) to the proactive (positioning

strategy) consumers have become part of the marketing mix;
something to be manipulated along with distribution,
advertising, promotion, packaging, etc., in order to attain

maximum benefit for the business. How are consumers
manipulated? First, they are taught to consume.
generic.Deaapfl
Advertising celebrates capitalism (McAllister 1996).

Whether one considers this malevolent or benign is
irrelevant; both critics and defenders of advertising
acknowledge that it is designed to spur consumption and that

by stimulating consumption "it plays an indispensable role
in the functioning of the capitalist economy" (Baran and
Sweezy 1964, 23). Again, this observation is essentially

amoral and non-judgmental. The U.S. is a capitalist economy
— it should not be surprising that institutional structures

and strategies are designed to perpetuate that system, or
to think of it from a Fordist perspective, where there is
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mass production there must necessarily be mass consumption.
This has occurred by encouraging people to adopt consumerism

as a way of life (Robins and Webster 1988).
Consumption as an ideology has long been recognized as
a goal of advertising (see, e.g., Leiss, Kline, and Jhally
1986; Pollay 1986; Williams 1977). Galbraith (1958)
precedes these observers with his discussion of advertising

and the construction of wants. Veblen (1899) anticipated
the segmentation phenomenon with his theory of conspicuous
consumption, the idea that products can express status.
Others have followed this train of thought by describing how
advertising encourages consumption as an expression of style

and values (Belk and Pollay 1985), and self-image (Jacoby
and Hoyer 1987; Mick 1987).
Nor is consumption ideology the sole province of
advertising. Media offerings tend to promote consumption as
well by repeatedly portraying idealized versions of
characters and situations always conducive to the idea of
having and using THINGS (clothes, cars, well-furnished
abodes, nice restaurants, gadgets ad infinitum). This
commonality between programming and advertising in promoting
consumption suggests a convergence in goals. Indeed,
Smythe's (1977) compelling description of audience as a
commodity is particularly apt within this context. Smythe
postulates that media, advertisers and audience/consumers
constitute a tripartite relationship. Essentially the
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relationship works as follows: media develops programming
that by content/delivery constructs an audience; advertisers
pay the program providers (the media) for access to these
audiences by purchasing advertising time within the
programming; audiences/potential consumers are thus
delivered to the advertiser.
He see strong evidence of this phenomenon in the way
television advertising is negotiated. There is no standard
rate card for advertising. Advertisers do not buy a spot in
time, rather they purchase time in a particular program
(Barnouw 1978). It follows that advertisers are interested
in the type of program and the kind of audience it delivers.
This allows us to tweak Smythe's theory to the extent that
it can be argued that what media really delivers are not
audiences, per se, but ratings (Meehan 1984a; 1986b).
Ratings services have acknowledged the importance of
describing audiences by including much more than raw numbers
of viewers in their analyses; they also include all manner
of demographic information, media usage patterns and product

usage information. The more narrowly a marketer defines a
segment the more likely that the segment's members will

indeed be similar; thus, we have increased emphasis on
narrowing the signal from broadcast networks to cable
channels, from mass periodicals such as Life and Look to
narrowly aimed magazines targeting bow hunters or female

fitness advocates or computer nerds, etc.
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The convergence between advertising and programming
extends beyond the promotion of consumption and the marriage

between target audience and media delivery system, to
encompass program content. Happy, light, non-controvers ial
programs are the norm for two reasons. First, it is
believed by many that people being entertained in a non
challenging fashion are more receptive to advertising
appeals than those engaged in critically thinking about a
program (see e.g., Goldberg and Gorn 1987). Second, even
though media offerings are becoming increasingly targeted,
it is axiomatic that a commercial medium does not want to

alienate or offend potential viewers. Media may consciously
pursue a relatively narrow segment but they will always

aspire to a mass audience because higher ratings translates
into increased revenues. Furthermore, advertisers tend to

shy away from controversial programming. Such timidity
usually has nothing to do with any disapprobation on the
part of advertisers, it is simply that they do not want to

be associated with potentially disruptive or
counterproductive activities, since media are dependent on
advertisers for their revenue stream and since the audience

is a nondurable good (Smythe 1977), media tend to accede to
advertiser's desire for pleasant entertainment.
In addition to placing advertisements within media

delivered and consumed in the home, advertisers are
increasingly utilizing what has been termed "place-based"
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media. Place-based media, sometimes referred to as "new
media," "alternative media," or even "environmental media"
has been defined by one ad executive as a medium "where the

demographics of the reader, viewer or listener are
controlled by the location in which the message is
delivered" (Cortez 1992, 25). Examples of place-based media

include the school-based Channel 1, McDonalds McMaoazine
magazine, K-Mart's in store radio (KMRT), posters and

display boards placed in senior citizen centers by The
Senior Network, airsickness bags on airplanes with ads
placed by In-Flight Humor!, interactive kiosks (like The
istation found in music stores), floor tiles, stencils on

sidewalks, messages on the pin-return bars in bowling
alleys, ads in the bottom of golf hole cups and on the
stalls in public restrooms; the list goes on and on (Kuntz
and Weber 1996; McAllister 1996). Advertisers have really

latched on to the place-based concept, spending between $350
and $500 million on place-based media in 1991 (Cortez 1992)

and upping the total to $700 million by 1994 with a
projected annual growth of 50 percent (Kelly 1994). Perhaps
the strongest indicator of the acceptance of place-based

strategies is the fact that establishment media
organizations such as NBC, CBS, ABC, Time Warner, Gannet,
and Turner Broadcasting are all investing in place-based
organizations. Turner has even created a subsidiary, Turner
95
Private Networks, to facilitate its entry into the system
(McAllister 1996).
Certainly, place-based advertising is not a new

concept: billboards, the Goodyear blimp, airplane sky
writers, point-of-purchase displays, advertisements in
arenas and stadiums have been around for years. But as
advertisers have become more concerned about clutter, remote

control zapping and the effect of VCRs, the attractiveness
of place-based media has increased. Growing technological

sophistication, e.g., improved satellite technology, has
facilitated the implementation of place-based media.
Further, many place-based media do a wonderful job of
segmenting markets. For example, consider an exerciser at
her local health club. She climbs on a Stairmaster and
begins watching one of the many television monitors

surrounding her, all tuned to HCTV (Health Club Television),
a satellite-delivered medium. The network broadcasts

programming about health-related issues and commercials for
health-related products. The people in the programming and
commercials are all idealized versions of health club
members. And the commercials sure reaching a relatively

captive audience consisting of health enthusiasts who are on
the go and so do not spend much time at home. In other
words, yuppies with plenty of disposable income (McAllister
1996). Altogether a very attractive target for marketers.
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As place-based media continues to expand it will likely
verge on the ubiquitous. McAllister (1996) lists five
categories of social places where place-based media can be
found: entertainment places, travel places, retail places,

health places, and educational places.
Entertainment places are locations where people go for
out-of-home entertainment, like movie theaters. Movie

studios have shown trailers before their feature films for
decades. Theater owners have increasingly taken advantage
of the opportunity to increase revenues by showing ads on

their screens before the filmed entertainment begins. Other
movie advertising ventures include: Movies USAf an ad-
supported magazine distributed in theaters (Magiera 1990);

cinemedia Corporation's experiment with placing ads on
popcorn bags (Magiera 1992); and United Artists' Lobby
Monitor Network, which places ads on television monitors in

movie theater lobbies (Mandese 1992).
Product placement in films has become big business with

corporations paying large sums to have their products placed
in films. Entire companies exist for the express purpose of

getting products placed in films and many large corporations
(e.g., Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Anheuser-Busch) have formed their

own in-house divisions dedicated specifically to product
placement and/or Hollywood advertising activities (Wasko,

Phillips, and Purdie, 1993). These advertising
opportunities are attractive because avid movie goers tend
97
to watch less television and are, therefore, underexposed to
ads; movies tend to be self-segmenting in that placements
fit into the natural surroundings of the movie and the genre
will tend to attract people amenable to the premise of the
film (e.g., action pictures attract a certain kind of
audience, romantic comedies a different demographic);

product placements are unobtrusive presentations, sometimes
referred to as "stealth advertisements," that inculcate
their messages into a viewers consciousness without setting
off the cognitive defense mechanisms normally present when
viewers are exposed to traditional advertisements; and with
the after-life provided by home video, product placements

are very cost effective.
Other examples of place-based media in entertainment
locations abound. Channel H, a televisual ad medium placed
in video arcades, positions music videos and video game tips

around the ads (Kelly 1991). Six Flags Entertainment has
150 television monitors placed along waiting lines for rides

at each of its amusement parks, plugging Time Warner
merchandise (Six Flags is owned by Time Warner) (Donaton

1993). Ocean Advertising began selling ad space on banners
and the sails of sailboats after the owner of the company
"began to wonder what good the small beach signs were doing
when everyone on the sands was facing the water" (Cray 1990,
4).
98
The second social place, travel places, targets
commercial travelers either in the air or on the ground.

Air travelers are exposed to Turner Broadcasting's CNN
Airport Network, displayed on television monitors placed at
gates and luggage claim areas of 17 domestic airports (as of
mid-1994) and featuring programming from Turner's cable CNN

and, of course, advertisements (McAllister 1996). Once in
the air consumers have the option of the on-flight magazine
or Sky Radio, run by Gannett. On longer flights passengers
may get to see a movie, product placements included.

For urban train commuters there is the Commuter
Channel, a television network featuring news and commuter

information wrapped around advertisements. The New York
subway system has developed plans with Gannett to make

transits more "advertiser friendly" in order to reach subway
commuters (McAllister 1996).
Just to cover all the bases, advertisers can target

travelers before they travel by investing in the Travel
Preview System, which provides free videos, including ads,

to travel agency customers interested in particular
destinations (Lawrence 1993).
Retail places have become a hot-bed of place-based
media. The aforementioned Kmart radio signal, KMRT,
includes 12 minutes of ads per hour and reaches four million

people daily (Fitzgerald 1993). J.C. Penney, R.H. Macy,
Footlocker and Sears, among others, have tested or
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implemented televisual systems in their stores (Donaton and

Fitzgerald 1990; Lipman 1992a). NBC has funded a
supermarket checkout-placed television system, NBC On-Site,
featuring silent television monitors (McCarroll 1992;
Mandese 1993). Ads have been placed on grocery carts, on
the backs of sales receipts and on floor tiles in stores. A

system currently being tested attaches small computer
activated monitors to grocery carts that will direct
shoppers to product locations, and offer information on

coupons, current sales and product usage. One company even
places ads on grocery check-out conveyor belts (Lawrence

1994).
A health place medium already mentioned, Health Club

Television, is a television system placed in front of
stationary exercise equipment featuring 12 minutes of ads
per hour (Schlossberg 1991). other examples include The

Good Health Channel targeting pediatric offices, with plans
to expand with a similar system for veterinarians' waiting

rooms (Kelly 1994), and the Newborn Channel, aimed at new
mothers and placed in hospital maternity wards (Kunkler
1992).
Channel One is no doubt the most infamous of

educational placed media. Despite the controversy it has
engendered, by mid-1992 it was in approximately 12,000
schools reaching eight million students, and generating $100
million in ad revenues during the 1991-1992 school year
100
(Donaton 1992). Scholastic Teen Network magazines claim to
reach eight million students. The Wall Street Journal has a
"classroom" edition which includes advertising (Donaton
1991). The College Television Network is an interactive
kiosk featuring music videos and advertisements, available
at 200 campus cafeterias as of 1994 (Goldman 1994).
Thus far the discussion has focused on the sheer

quantity of messages promoting generic consumption. This is
not inconsistent with the concept of segmentation. No
person maintains monogamous fidelity to a single segment, we
all belong to multiple segments and engage in many varied
activities. If I like tennis I may read a tennis magazine
and watch tennis matches on television. But at different
junctures, I may also be concerned with car mechanics or

home repair, investment information, vacations in Alaska,
etc. In each of these activities/interests, marketers will
attempt to present information to induce me to purchase

products. If I decide to relax watching television or a
movie, I will be exposed to more messages not just via
explicit advertising messages but within the program content
itself. The structure of media encourages multiple
exposures to consumption messages. And just passing through
daily experiences, one is forced to pass through a gauntlet
of place-based messages. Even advertising apologists tend

to concede that the mass quantity of advertising may lead to
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its greatest effect: to increase generic demand
(consumption) (Schudson 1984).
Place-based advertising is an example of one
contradiction inherent in modern marketing strategies. That

is, while there is increasing emphasis on segmenting
audiences/consumers, business at the same time guests after
larger and larger audience and customer groups. Some place-
based offerings have a targeting emphasis; for example,
education placed media have a fairly specific target in mind
(school age children, college students). Airport media tend
to target business travelers. Product placement in films,
as previously stated, are important to advertisers because
dedicated cinema patrons tend to watch less television than
the populace at large and, therefore, are an underexposed
segment in the view of advertisers. Further, movie genres
as well as specific television programs will attract certain
types of audiences thus allowing placements to target

certain segments.
However, movie theater attendance is a relatively
imprecise segmentation parameter and other place-based media
such as billboards, and many retail presentations are

equally ill-suited to target specific segments. It would
seem that while many place-based media have targeting

strategies in mind the credo of marketers is, "When in
doubt, advertise." This scatter gun approach does not
suggest that the theories and implications of segmentation
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are being ignored; rather, marketers may be cognizant of the
fact that they are not always sure what targets they may be
approaching. In this sense place-based efforts may not be

targetless, just less targeted.
On the other hand, pressure on business to continually
grow increases the impetus to expand audience and customer

bases. In such an environment the rapid growth of place-
based media are an obvious attempt increase ad message
exposures, regardless of the segment.
Penanfl for.Brands
A second way that advertisers encourage consumption is
by attempting to create desire for specific products. In

this era of segmentation based on life style and
psychographic demarcations such appeals have increasingly
taken the form of symbolic constructions.
It may seem ironic that in this era of segmentation,
symbolic constructions, rather than differentiated products,

predominate the marketplace. But the reality is that most
products (certainly not all) have few differences to
discuss. The vast majority of products in the U.S. are
still mass produced; as such, advertisements that might
focus on specific product attributes would tend to emphasize

the lack of distinction between competitive products.
Therefore, the true irony: in order to differentiate one
product from another advertisers must avoid talking too much
103
about the product (McAllister 1996). And advertisers have
done just that; a comprehensive survey of television
commercials in 1988 found that virtually all of them had one
thing in common — no claims about product attributes or
performance (Leerhsen 1988).
Advertisements in our segmented world are, then, not so
much about the products as about the people targeted to be
persuaded — their likes, values, and aspirations. As

Judith Williamson writes in her semiotic study. Decoding
Advertisements.
Advertisements are selling us something else beside

consumer goods: in providing us with a structure in
which we and those goods are interchangeable, they are
selling us ourselves...Ideology is the meaning made
necessary by the condition of society while helping to
perpetuate those conditions. We feel a need to
belong, to have a social place; it can be hard to
find. Instead we may be given an imaginary one
(Williamson 1978, 13).
Williamson goes on to discuss how people reify product

symbolism,
In our society, while the real distinctions between

people are created by their role in the process of
production as workers, it is the products of their
work that are used in the false categories invoked by
advertising, to obscure the real structure of society
by replacing class with the distinction made by the
consumption of particular goods (Williamson 1978,
13).
These observations highlight the essential product of

symbolic, or referential, appeals: consumers begin to
understand consumer goods as delivering desirable personal

attributes, e.g., peer acceptance, sex appeal, taste, and
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they begin to make distinctions based on mho does, or does
not, purchase given products. In other words, "commercial

persuasion appears to program not only our shopping and
product use behavior but also the larger domain of our
social roles, language, goals, values, and the sources of
meaning in our culture" (Pollay 1986, 21).
At this point it may be illustrative to delve, albeit
shallowly, into the realm of psychology to discuss one
important dynamic at work in segmented appeals based on
symbolic distinctions: ingroup-outgroup behaviors.
Few would argue that advertising does not serve to
alter and reinforce societal norms. For example, "...we see

advertising actually creating and naming taboos. The most
famous, B.O. and Halitosis.... Bad breath and body odor have
always existed, of course, but as individual matters. To

transfer them from personal idiosyncrasies into tribal
taboos is a magicianly trick indeed" (Gossage 1967, 366).
Nor can it be argued that such fear appeals are created

unintentionally as specific research has been conducted as
to such appeals' effectiveness (e.g., Keller and Block

1996).
As American society becomes more fragmented and as
advertising attempts to increasingly isolate segments, a

logical result is the formation of cohort groups, either
real or imagined. Just as a society will have norms, so
will such a cohort group, even if the only thing binding the
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group together is the use of a particular product. Such
norms can be exploited by advertisers to create the
impression that belonging to the cohort group is somehow
desirable and, by inference, not belonging to the group is
less desirable if not to be specifically avoided. This
paradigm is the classic ingroup-outgroup dichotomy and it is
the promotion of such a dichotomy that has been presented as

the motivation for response to the abstract visual images,
or "carry-over symbols,” utilized in referent advertisements
(Goldman and Montagne 1986).
Various studies have found that social communication is

a key factor in transmitting influence within groups (Arndt
1967; Feldman and Spencer 1965; Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955;

Summers and King 1969; Whyte 1955). such word-of-mouth
communication tends to be dominant when, 1) the product is
visible and, therefore, behavior is apparent, and 2) the

product is distinctive and can more easily be identified
with style, taste, and other personal norms (Assael 1984).
Consulting reference groups in this instance is consistent

with concept of "social proof" (Latane and Darley 1970).
Advertisers attempt to simulate and/or substitute for
word-of-mouth by presenting idealized settings in which
"typical" (again idealized) consumers use or talk about the
product. Such vignettes attempt to create a social
environment to which consumers can relate thus affirming the

value of the product, i.e. providing social proof. Other
106
methods of providing social proof include celebrity
endorsements, testimonials by satisfied customers or experts
(often created as part of a story line). A different type
of ad acknowledges the importance of social communication by
presenting a uniquely interesting or entertaining ad that is
designed to elicit just such communication (e.g, Wendy's
"Where's the Beef" campaign). With either approach the
point is to court group identification based on referencing
a product to the values and norms of the (created?) group.
To use a brand of car, drink, smoke, or food that

is...advertised gives a man the feeling that he
belongs to something bigger than himself. He is part
of a process or a culture that contains and nourishes
him. And the irrational basis of the appeals made to
him by the ads reinforce his sense of mystic
communion (McLuhan 1953, 555).
Such group identification, or "mystic communion," goes
a long way toward explaining the proliferation of logos and

brand names stamped conspicuously on all manner of consumer
goods. Interestingly, manufacturers used to give away many
such logoed items as a means of product promotion. Today,
because of the demand for such items, what was once
considered a cost of doing business is now considered an

additional source of revenue.
As previously stated, group formation is encouraged by
presentation of idealized norms that are valued by the group
and/or society as a whole. Such attributes as youth and
slimness are promoted via peripheral messages and attractive
contexts. Advertising promotes the idea that certain kinds

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of people (young, attractive, wealthy, fun-loving, etc.) buy
particular products. The implication is that purchasers of

such products will have something in common with the people
presented; they will all be part of the same ingroup. Such
consumers want "those attributes and resources that go into
the construction of a virtual social identity for persons in

their society" (Rainwater 1974). Consumers are encouraged
to acquire "a prefabricated identity, advertised, marketed,
and guaranteed by the identity-producing agencies" (Berger

and Luckman 1964).
Unfortunately, such identities hinge on the
perpetuation of simplistic, symbolic stereotypes, chosen for
their clarity and conciseness. Such presentations serve to

affirm the perception of ingroup versus outgroup. Research
has shown that the mere existence of groups, often as a
function of the belief that such groups exist is enough to

cause intergroup hostility (e.g., Billig and Tajfel 1973;
Howard and Rothbart 1980; Rabbie and Horowitz 1969; Tajfel
1970). once the perception is formed that groups exist, the

positions of the groups tend to become polarized. Each
group sees the other as consisting of homogeneous members,
rather than distinct individuals, and thus the stereotypes
are further ingrained and perpetuated (Park and Rothbart

1982; Rothbart and Birrell 1977; Rothbart et al. 1978;
Snyder, Tanke, and Borsheid 1977; Tajfel and Wilkes 1964).
108
This is not to suggest that American society is on the
verge of internecine warfare. Ingroup-outgroup dynamics, as
they relate to product positioning and segmentation, are

offered as one explanatory variable involved in purchase
decisions as well as in the fragmentation of society and
individual's attitudes toward others. Daniel Boorstin

(1973) has suggested that the department store democratized
luxury by putting expensive goods on display for anyone who
cared to engage in shopping. Ingroup-outgroup analysis
might offer an alternative interpretation. Certainly,

luxury items were more visible but they were not more
accessible to all sectors of society. In effect, what was

democratized was envy (Schudson 1984).
Whether discussing advertising's effect on generic
demand or its promotion of individual products the
overriding commonality is that m o d e m advertising tends to

frame its appeals in psychological terms. While the
employment of psychological techniques in advertising is not

especially new (Veblen 1899; Scott 1913) there is the
growing awareness that such entreaties may have unintended

side-effects. Vance Packard (1957) may have been the first
to draw attention to the potential negative aspects of

psychological "manipulation."
...the way many of us are being influenced and

manipulated — far more than we realize — in the
patterns of our everyday lives. Large scale efforts
are being made, often with impressive success, to
channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions
and our thought processes by the use of insight gleaned
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from psychiatry and the social sciences. Typically,

these efforts take place beneath our level of
awareness (Packard 1957, 1 1 ).
While Packard's analyses have generally been derided as

overblown he did draw attention to, and engender a concern
for, the psychological aspects of advertising that remains

today. Herbert Marcuse suggests that at least one
psychological consequence is false emotional satisfactions

to encourage people "to behave and consume in accordance
with the advertisements" (1964, 5).
The people recognize themselves in their commodities;

they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set,
split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very
mechanism which ties the individual to his society has
changed (Marcuse 1964, 9).
Advertising critic Fred Inglis concurs with Marcuse,

Attainment of the values is signaled by acquiring the
appropriate objects, using them, throwing them away
and acquiring replacements. Continuous and
conspicuous consumption is the driving energy of this
fiction...The objects advertised are drenched in a
certain light and smell. They give off the powerful
fragrance of the very rich and instead of leaving the
object in an intelligible domestic world, remove it to
a fantastic one (Inglis 1972, 17)
As the reader will recall, William Leiss (1976)

connects psychological symbolism to segmentation in a neat
package. He asserts that there are two facets at work in

the psychological interaction between advertiser and
consumer. The first facet is the symbolism consciously
employed in the manufacture and sale of the product,
including advertising imagery. The second facet is the

symbolic associations selectively employed by consumers in
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"constructing" lifestyle models. It necessarily follows
that the marketplace as a whole is divided into semi-
autonomous sectors which respond to different cues or to the
same cues in different ways — thus the market is parceled
into segments depending on how they react to marketing
stimuli.
Christopher Lasch (1978) builds on Leiss' thesis by
asserting that in such a marketplace an individual's self-
awareness is both a condition and a commodity. Lasch goes

on to make the following points about the evolution of
advertising.
1. Mass production demands a mass market. And, in the

words of Edward A. Filene in 1919, "the masses must
learn to behave like human beings in a mass production
world."
2. Civilizing the masses means giving them certain ideas.

Among those ideas is what Calvin Coolidge described as
"the desire...for better things," implied by
advertising.
3. The original function served by advertising was

marketing products. Now, unfortunately, it serves to
market feelings, sensations and styles of life. It
suggests not that a product works, but that consumption
will cure the problems of age, sex, or loneliness.
4. In so doing, advertising becomes part of the spiritual
cant of the age. It feeds on alienation and addresses
not needs, but personal dissatisfactions.
5. Advertising has two faces: One serves the powers that

be; the other tries to utilize the astounding
"revolution in manners and morals" that we have
undergone in the twentieth century. One thing is
perhaps as bad as another, for when advertising allies
itself with the sexual revolution it succeeds only in
destroying social authority; when it encourages the
liberation of women it only sets the sexes against each
Ill
other; when it flatters the young and glorifies youth

it makes mature social expectations impossible (Lasch
1978, 72).
It may well be that this assessment is too harsh, but

the concept of self-awareness as commodity is insightful and
the assertion that advertising feeds on alienation and

dissatisfaction is but a flip-flop of the ingroup-outgroup
dichotomy discussed previously. Unexplained, but of some

import, is how and why advertising underwent the
transformation described in point three, from a marketer of
products to a seducer that preys on insecurities and offers

to alleviate psychic discomfort through the consumption of
commodities.
The answer, it will be argued, is that as markets have

become more fragmented and as marketers have increasingly
engaged in proactively segmenting, the focus has changed

from the product to the consumer, from designing products to
positioning products, from satisfying needs to creating

wants.
Two advertising executives, A1 Ries and Jack Trout,
claim credit for coining the term "positioning" in 1972.

They freely admit that positioning is not about the product
but about what "you do to the mind of the prospect" (1981,
3). They aver that the basic approach of positioning is not

to create something new but to manipulate preexisting
predispositions in the consumer's mind. This may be a

Mephistophelean conceit. As Gossage puts it:
Kephistopheles grants a boon: eternal life, youth,
prowess, togetherness, unfulfilled dreams. His price
is always something. When it is such a small thing as
a pack of cigarettes, or a soft drink, or a lipstick,
why should we not take a chance? (Gossage 1967, 367).
The point is that, of course, such desires as Gossage
enumerates are preexisting, but who would think of
associating such desires with products? Which begs the
question, if consumers would never have made the connection

between desire and product, have marketers "created" a want?
This brings us to a discussion of the marketing praxis
of needs and wants. Critics of advertising proclaim that
advertisers increase consumption by creating needs in
people. Advertisers respond that one cannot create a need -
- it is an inner motivational state. One can discover a
need and cater to a need but creating a need is impossible
(Assael 1984). This debate is trenchant because of how the
word "need" is perceived. Heed is irresistible, inviolate,
imperative. If advertisers can create needs then, it is

argued, consumers are helpless to resist their appeals.
Marketers, in essence, acknowledge this concatenation but
attempt to break the chain by defining needs as
physiological (e.g., food, water) and psychological (safety,
belongingness, esteem, self-actualization) (Maslow 1954);

they can satisfy these needs, they can even motivate people
to want to satisfy needs (e.g., surround them with images of
food, remind them of the risk of fire in the home), but
these inner motivational states are preexisting and cannot
1X3
be created. A primary function of advertising is, then, to
motivate consumers, to encourage them to want to satisfy a
need. This distinction between needs and wants is a
critical part of advertising's defense of itself.
Regardless of one's semantic interpretation of needs
versus wants, critics remain adamant that advertising
creates demand for products that otherwise would not exist.
Advertising as an industry just as vehemently denies that it

exercises such a degree of power over consumers. This
dispute is, on the surface, almost amusing. Critics are, in
effect, criticizing advertising for achieving its function,
for what is the purpose of advertising but to induce
consumers to consume? Conversely, advertising, in its
repeated denials, is put in the position of strenuously

arguing the ineffectiveness of its product (Leiss, Kline,
and Jhally 1986, 33).
Irrespective of the truth in this argument, for the
truth is unlikely to be discovered herein, three points
should be made about this conflict between critics and
defenders of advertising. First, in that critics often
blame advertising for everything from the increased
commodification of culture, to unnecessary increases in
consumption, to the erosion of democratic institutions it
should be noted that these are all results endemic to
capitalist society. To the extent that critics open fire on

these issues, guns blazing away at advertising, it should be
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recognized that while they nay score some hits they are
often aiming at the wrong target.
Second, while advertising denies creating needs, is

circumspect in regards to creating wants, and demurs that
there is no proof that it increases consumption, one would
have to be extremely naive not to understand that

advertisers aspire to accomplish all three.
Third, it is segmentation activities, and the focus on
positioning products, rather than producing differentiated
products, that has pushed advertising into the emphasis on
symbolic and referential messages. This is a direct result
of positioning as a modern strategy which is an ephemeral,
mental construct. That mass produced, generic products can
be transformed in perception into individualized offerings
meeting the specific needs of increasingly narrow segments
is indeed a feat of exceptional legerdemain. Whether one

applauds or derides this accomplishment, it should be
understood that the circumstances surrounding and
interacting with advertising dictated the strategy.
Now let us put advertising aside for the moment and
discuss other effects segmentation has had on American

society.
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Priyacy and, control
The concept of database research is not new. In the
early 1970s University of Michgan law professor Arthur
Miller warned of the potential abuses of computers and data

banks (Miller 1971).
However, driven chiefly by marketing researcher's
hunger for more and more information about consumers, and
assisted by technological advances in computer networks and
databases, the Orwellian notion of Big Brother is now a
reality. But whereas Orwell envisioned government as Big
Brother in 1984, in the 1990s business and marketing have

co-opted the role.
The function of database marketing is to "drill down"

ever deeper into consumers' personality and consumption
characteristics and then combine as many of these

personality variables with as much demographic information
as possible in order to more precisely match groups and
individuals with products and product appeals (Berry 1994).
The point is not only segmenting markets but understanding

how to position products to appeal to segments.
Information is gleaned from a variety of sources:
credit card companies, financial institutions, insurance
companies, employers, educational institutions, retail
enterprises, credit bureaus, government entities, catalogue
and mail order companies, newspapers, magazines, ratings

services, and consumers themselves, such as when they
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volunteer information on warranty cards, sweepstakes
entries, job applications, etc. There has been one
documented case of Social Security workers illegally selling
information to marketers. Even doctors have discovered that

they have information about patients valuable to commercial
enterprise (Miller 1992). Marketers are literally
salivating over the prospect of interactive communication
since such interactions will be computer mediated. It goes

without saying that all interactive transactions will be
recorded, filed and stored for future use.
Mailing lists are constantly bought, sold and exchanged
and data bases consequently expanded. Computer matching is
a relatively recent development which allows data managers
to greatly increase the information they have on
individuals. The way the system works is that the manager

gets access to several data bases and then a computer
searches the various data banks for consumer matches. When
the computer identifies a match, usually made on an

individual's social security number, then the program
combines all the information on that individual from the

separate data bases into one larger data bank. Systems such
as this allow businesses to gain access to ever greater

amounts of personal data on individuals (Bloom, Milne, and
Adler 1994)
Powerful PCs have further enabled businesses to gather

information. Companies can now purchase the results of the
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entire 1990 census linked to a street-by-street nap of the
U.S. on several CD-ROM disks (Schwartz 1991). Lotus
Development, a software company, and Equifax, a company that
compiles financial information about individuals, announced
a plan to market a data base that would have allowed anyone
with a PC to purchase a list of names, buyinq habits and

income levels of selected households. Dubbed "Marketplace,"
Lotus planned introducing the CD-ROM databases during the

first quarter of 1991 (King 1991; Radding 1991a). After a
huge public outcry, the companies shelved the plan (Lacayo

1991).
Caller ID has been a boon to data base marketing. When
combined with computer matching capabilities, Caller ID

allows companies to determine name, address, credit rating,
credit card number and other personal information before
answering the call. This technology also affords the

opportunity for marketers to add information to their data
bases about the shopping behavior of individuals because
even inquiries (not just purchases) can be noted in a
person's records (Bloom, Milne, and Adler 1994) and the
caller's phone number can be used to mine other data bases

for information via computer matching.
Video rentals have become an area of unique interest

since the rental lists of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork
were released to the media. Congress responded by passing

the Video Privacy Act of 1988, which prevents retailers from
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revealing the titles of films that people have rented. This
law is interesting in that it is one of only two federal

statutes dealing specifically with individual privacy, the
other being the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970. All
other federal laws are designed to prevent government
intrusion into private lives, not to prevent business or

other individuals from such intrusions. Accordingly, most
private sector activity remains unregulated (Peck 1984;
Simitis 1987). Undeterred by federal prohibition,
Blockbuster Video announced that it would compile and sell

data about the categories of movies rented by customers
(e.g., comedy, action, etc.). As with the Lotus Development
proposal, an outraged public caused the company to back away
from the proposal, and in fact deny that it had ever
intended to compile or market such lists (Hume 1991; Radding

1991b). How has data based marketing been applied? One
example is Kay-Bee Toys, which sent a "magalogue" (part
magazine, part catalogue) to ten million households with

children ages four to 14 and located within a ten-minute
drive of a Kay-Bee store (Kim 1993). Several companies are

testing systems for supermarkets that will record a
customer's every purchase. The supermarket could then

offer, say, Coke a list of Pepsi buyers so that Coke could
target them with special offers (Schwartz 1991). One
company even sells a data base of individuals in financial
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difficulty to quick-cash, high-fee loan companies (Jacobson

and Mazur 1995).
The effectiveness of data base marketing, or at least
the anticipation of effectiveness, can be seen in the growth
of data collection businesses — today an industry
generating over $1 billion in annual revenues. Further

evidence is the growing success of direct mail enterprises.
Once pleased with a response rate of one percent on a mass
mailing, direct mailings are now routinely garnering

response rates in excess of five percent (Lacayo 1991). As
data base marketing becomes more sophisticated and grows in
terms of the amount of data collected, the tendency will be
to drill down ever deeper, refining more detailed profiles

of consumers and tailoring messages to appeal right down to
the individual level. The Internet is already experiencing

such activity. Note the following juxtaposition of two
Advertising Age reports, the first from November 1996, the

second from May 1997. The first trumpets the start up of
Doubleclick, a company providing targeted Neb advertising.

Doubleclick identifies interested parties and targets them
based on domain, region of country, time of day, day of week
browser type and operating system. The advertiser then can

tailor an ad for the user who then clicks on the ad
(Williamson 1996). Just six months later another start up
company, MatchLogic, announced a massive Internet data

collection effort, with the goal of getting at least one
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million users to fill out surveys which would allow the
company to target consumers for advertisers and

automatically deliver ads to Web sites (Williamson 1997).
Please note the distinction between the delivery systems:

under the former, users had to request exposure to the ad;
in the latter instance, targeted communications are sent

directly to the consumer.
Data gathering is not just restricted to consumption

activities. Cellular and cordless phones are little more
than high tech walkie talkies, easy to eavesdrop on and

record. Workplace privacy is a thing of the past, from
psychological testing before an applicant can even be hired,

to drug testing, to all sorts of electronic surveillance.
Employees' e-mail transmissions are monitored, keystrokes

are counted, phone system and telephone mail order operators
have their calls monitored. U-Haul, as well as many other

companies, even announces to their phone-in customers that
their call may be monitored by a superior to insure that

their employee dealt with the caller properly (and asked for
as many add-on sales as possible). The Employer's
Information Service has created a data bank on workers who
have reported on-the-job injuries. For a fee, the company
will send a report on prospective employees, including prior

job injuries and worker compensation claims, to employers
(Lacayo 1991).
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When viewed in its entirety, data collection, data base
marketing and surveillance activities raise not only privacy

issues but issues of control. Consider the video cassette
recorder. Have you ever recorded a program or rented a tape

then watched them while exercising control over the viewing
process — fast forward through the commercials, rewind to
see a part over again, etc.? Have you then watched a
network or cable broadcast and been somewhat disoriented

over your lack of control? When the VCR was first
introduced Universal and Disney sued Sony/Betamax to halt
recording of over-the-air programming (Lardner 1987; Wasko
1994). Mark Poster (1990) summarizes the plaintiffs

arguments, although probably not in quite the fashion they
would have chosen to express themselves, when he concludes
that what the suit was really about was "...not only control
of the airwaves and the content of what is sent on them, but
also control of the viewer, control over when he or she
watches, what is watched, the order in which it is watched,

and the speed of the images" (Poster 1990, 73-74).
One can certainly understand why a marketer would be

concerned about such issues of control; if one's primary
concern is the presentation of a persuasive message then one

would want control of the context within which the message
is presented. But a larger issue is that as we cede control
of our personal statistics, we may at the same time be
forfeiting our personalities. As we allow private companies
and government to collect information on how we conduct our
lives we allow them to categorize us and, ultimately, the

ability to direct us. As institutions find out more about
our activities it increases the potential that they will
only offer us an array of options (in work, entertainment,

information) that maximize their profits. More than just a
loss of privacy, this is social management. As Mosco
asserts in his essay on pay-per society, "Hence, the greater

fear is not that we will give up our privacy, but that we
will keep it and live in a society in which privacy is not

worth having" (Mosco 1988, 13).
Joachim Hirsch (1981), although referring to the state

rather them to business, neatly describes the duality of
purpose in data gathering activities in a pay-per society:

(business as) "...both the materially supporting 'caretaker
of existence' and the controlling, repressive 'surveillance

state'" (1981, 83). Why would people choose to live under
such a "repressive surveillance state?" Hell, first the
concept of choice is, in this instance, problematic.

Second, according to Marcuse the system is "sold" by its
success, by its ability to produce the goods:
The productive apparatus and the goods and services

which it produces "sell" or impose the social system as
a whole. The means of mass transportation and
communication, the commodities of lodging, food, and
clothing, the irresistible output of the
entertainment and information industry carry with them
prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual
and emotional reactions which bind the consumers more
or less pleasantly to the producers and, through the
latter, to the whole. The products indoctrinate and
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manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is

immune against its falsehood...Thus emerges a pattern
of one-dimensional thought and behavior in which ideas,
aspirations, and objectives that, by their content,
transcend the established universe of discourse and
action are either repelled or reduced to the terms of
this universe (Marcuse 1964, 26-27).
It would seem that in times of prosperity, such as we
are currently experiencing, such a social system as Marcuse
has envisioned would be even more immune to criticism or
objection; or to put it another way, the tendency of the
system to inoculate itself against subversion should be even

stronger (Bennett 1982). That an ideology of consumption
could take hold in a capitalist system is hardly surprising;

that such an ideology could be more easily and completely
imposed in an era of segmentation is even less of a surprise
for segmentation, as has been discussed, offers distortion
(positioning) as reality and promises relationships where
only consumption occurs. Such a system offers a mirror to

participants that reflects their existence only as it exists
within the constraints of the system. It defines the form
in which men "live" their relationship to the conditions of

their existence, the form in which "their relationship to
their conditions of existence is represented to them"

(Althusser 1971, 163).
In segmented America, the existence represented to

individuals is based on the cluster, or segment to which
they adhere. To expand on a thought previously discussed
124
from the book Habits of the Heart. Robert Bellah and co
authors assert,
The sectoral pattern of m o d e m American society has

thus often been able to contain potential conflicts by
separating those who are different without impairing
the economic linkages of sectors within the larger
economy...The concept of one's 'peers' concomitantly
underwent a subtle, but important, shift of meaning.
It came to signify those who share the same specific
mix of activities, beginning with occupation and
economic position, but increasingly implying the same
attitudes, tastes, and style of life (Bellah et al.
1985, 44).
As the number of segments grows, so does the fragmentation

of society.
Fractioni zed_Media. Fragmented Markets
In this section fragmentation will be discussed on two
related planes: the fragmentation of the media and the

fragmentation of society. Obviously, if one looks down from
the overarching purview of segmentation, media and audience
are intertwined. Segmentation seeks to demassify the market
and so desires media that can narrowcast a message to a

specific target. By the same token, as the mass media has
spawned its many offspring, each of these children has

searched for an audience and those that were attracted have
been counted, interviewed, surveyed, focus-grouped, and

researched to the point where marketers could describe
another segment, no matter how small.
Media fragmentation is a myth. During the 1990s the
number of cable networks, magazines, radio stations, VCRs,
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and, of course, computers increased, yet as Bagdikian (1992)
has chronicled media conglomeration continues apace. Thus
we have the seeming contradiction of more outlets, more

channels, being operated by fewer and fewer corporate
entities. These megacorporate media conglomerates have as
their sole raison d'etre, return to stockholders and they
run their many media outlets in a constant search for
synergies that can increase corporate profits. The Columbia

Journalism Review reported that shortly after Disney
purchased ABC, a March 1996 piece on "Good Morning America"
by a "consumer editor" heaped eight minutes of praise on the
Disney Institute, invoking the Disney name or Mickey Mouse's

face 16 times (Rich 1996). Janet Wasko (1994) reports that
while cable outlets have increased the same narrow range of
producers and programming proliferate (see also Meehan
1986b). She argues that just as corporations look for

synergies from above, a form of "cultural synergy" exists
within the programming systems, reproducing characters and

programs in one format after another (Wasko 1994, 252).
Herbert Schiller (1989) anticipated this reality,
"Indicative of the end-in-itself approach is the notion that
because cable TV provides numerous channels the viewer's

freedom is substantially enhanced....More likely under
present corporate arrangements, a narrow range of familiar

materials (will be) transmitted regardless of the channel
capacity" (1989, 173).
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In other words, more does not necessarily mean
different. To paraphrase Graham Murdock, multiplicity does

not equal diversity (Wasko 1994). Or, "A difference which
makes no difference is no difference" (Curtis 1988, 96).
It can be argued that the major function of a
"fragmented" media is to fragment audiences, creating
targets to which advertisers can offer specialized,
customized appeals. Perhaps a superior term to describe the
media is fractionized, which indicates small entities still
connected to the whole and connotes a conscious design, a
specific plan applied to the development of niched media.
For make no mistake, niched media are designed at the
behest, implicit or explicit, of advertisers.
Advertisers and media offer images and symbols that
purport to reflect American life and they design the system
by which these images are controlled and delivered. In

short, what is being described here is literally the
construction of society. Joseph Turow (1997) makes four
points about the way advertisers develop images of people

and their lives.
1. The industrial construction of society is a

purposeful activity, though not a conspiratorial
one.
2. The industrial construction of society is an

integral part of a company's struggle for position.
3. Companies look both outside and inside their

industries to decide how society is changing and
what to do about it.
127
4. The ideas about society that companies develop are

embodied in the structure of the media as well as in
their content (Turow 1997, 184*186).
Billions of dollars are spent in research activities
each year by advertisers, their clients, and media in an
attempt to understand society. A review of advertising

trade magazines, business periodicals and academic journals
devoted to this research (discussed in Chapter V) attests to
the pragmatism with which this task is approached; rarely do
these publications contain any discussion of the moral or

social meanings of their work. There is no evidence that
proprietary researchers are any less pragmatic then their
published brethren. The point here is that tremendous
resources are expended attempting to understand the

motivations of individuals and then through structure,
format and content to seduce and direct society. Turow
argues that because there is no evidence of a "central
committee" or overt collusion that no conspiracy to control
exists (Turow 1997, 185). Such lack of evidence is not

necessarily conclusive; witness the collusion of cigarette
companies and their success in hiding the fact for over 50
years. The aphorism, "If it walks like a duck, and talks

like a duck, it probably is a duck" may be applicable here.
However, conspiracy and collusion, real or imagined, is not

so relevant as the fact that media and advertisers have an
agenda and they are moving along it in concert.
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Marketers' hunger to understand every nuance of
consumer behavior is driven by the desire to effectively
position their firms vis-a-vis competitors. They utilize
not only internally derived information but look to
government and academic sources in attempting to identify
trends and upheavals in the economy, family structure,

minority populations, politics, etc. This information is
utilized in an attempt to tailor media structure and

advertising appeals to more effectively promote corporate
goals.
Media entrepreneurs design formats and outlets that
they believe will attract audiences desirable to
advertisers. Marketers decide how many and which mix of
outlets are actually attractive in terms of the audience
they are trying to reach. Media and advertisers negotiate

the content that will flow though the various formats. And
above it all, conglomerates juggle media to reach the
maximum number of consumers. Thus we see an entity like
Disney coordinating the activities of such outlets as ABC,

ESPN, the Disney Channel, films (Disney, Touchstone and
Hollywood Pictures), video, magazines, books, music, and

newspapers.
The result of marketing and media activities is that
society has been parceled, pigeonholed, segmented and
fragmented. This is not to suggest that media and marketing
activities are solely responsible for the decollectivization
129
of society. Such an issue is not so easily delimited and
media and marketers do not deserve to be thus proscribed.
However, in seeking to further segment already fragmenting

factions and in describing and promoting these societal
divisions, advertisers and media have contributed to and
exacerbated already deep social divisions. These divisions

can have, and will have, many negative consequences.
Even a cursory perusal of the segmentation systems

presented in Chapter III must lead even the most ardent
defender of segmentation to the conclusion that some
segments are more attractive than others. As the gap
between the rich and the poor widens (Mosco 1996), and as
the middle class disappears in this country (Auchmutey
1985), the division between haves and have-nots, between
attractive and unattractive segments, must necessarily
deepen. In any system where dollars dictate influence,

where the "democracy of cash" (Boorstin 1973) holds sway,
those with the most dollars are granted the most votes.
Such distinctions have ramifications for programming
content, information access, and democratic institutions.

A classic example of how segmenting can impact
programming is the massacre of "rural oriented" programming

in the early 1970s (Meehan 1986a). At the end of the 1970-
1971 network television season CBS had nine of the top 20
highest-rated television programs, including "Mayberry

R.F.D." (no. 15) and "Hee Haw" (no. 16). other "rural"
130
programs still drawing solid audiences were "Green Acres"
and "The Beverly Hillbillies." By the next season all four

programs were gone from the schedule. The reason for
eliminating these programs, even including two in the top
20, was that CBS' audiences were perceived as too old and
rural for advertisers. NBC and ABC were both designing

programming (e.g., "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" [NBC] and
"Mod Squad" [ABC]) to appeal to younger, more urban
audiences. Thus, despite the popularity of the rural
programs with literally millions of viewers, out the door

they went. While there may have been millions of viewers,
they were the wrong millions (McAllister 1996).
The moral of all this is, when media claim that they
simply "give the audience what they want," they lie.
At best what they do is "give only certain audiences
what they want." Even more precisely, the self-serving
media motto should really by amended to, "We give
advertisers who they want" (McAllister 1996, 46-47).
In today's age of media multiplicity it is, perhaps,

unlikely that millions of rural aficionados will be left out
in the cold,1 but the point remains the same: there will be
those who are left out of the media mix simply because they
are unattractive to advertisers.
Obviously, relatively wealthy, inclined-to-purchase
individuals are primary targets. Commonly referred to as

upscale by marketers, these segments will tend to get the
majority of media and advertising attention. Evidence of

this exists not only in the types of appeals made to various
segments but in the descriptive language used by marketers
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and media executives. Information Week refers to its
readers as "affluent and demographically correct customers"
(Walker 1994, 24). One account executive specializing in
Internet ads claimed her firm represented an opportunity for
"very focused, very potent micromarketing" to people who
could afford the best (Weaver 1994, 28). The flip side is
how these same people refer to unattractive segments. One
direct-marketing consultant claimed that the upscale "social
stratum...tends to be motivated by a multitude of facts, not
(the) snappy 30 second jingles" that sway the lower parts of
society (Eicoff 1983, N14). A Claritas executive proclaims,
"By nature segmentation is discrimination; I'm

discriminating against people I don't think are willing to
buy my product" (as quoted in Larson 1992, 56).
Think of it this way; how long will a media enterprise
exist if its express target is individuals with no

disposable income?
The mass quantities of consumer information gathered
and correlated with narrowly targeted media outlets results
in "...linking increasingly specific kinds of programming to

increasingly well-defined audiences" (Mosco 1996, 152).
Within such programming is embedded advertising increasingly

tailored to appeal to the attitudes, interests and opinions
of the audience. As technology allows these appeals will
become even more specific. For example, Time Warner already

has a system, Target Select, that customizes and
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personalizes magazine ads through the use of computer-
controlled selective binding and ink-jet printing (Wasko
1994, 49). Such specificity is of concern in terms of
information flow and access. If, as advertisers claim, a
primary function of advertising is to inform consumers of
product choices, then it follows that such information is

restricted to the target audience. Not only does this
system deny information to non-target consumers who may, if
made aware, be interested in certain products, it also
stereotypes target consumers based on some marketer's
archetype of who should be interested in certain types of
products, thus restricting that segment's ability to
consider appropriate products outside the constraints of

their "profile."
Once an audience is segmented, it tends to receive the
types of information it desires. This is a fairly simple
concept. What would be the reaction if Rush Limbaugh
suddenly came out in favor of abortion and against capital
punishment? Every time Sports Illustrated prints an article
on the environment, its letters to the editor page is filled
with missives criticizing the publishers for printing a
"non-sports" article. People do not tune into the Sci-Fi
Channel to see reruns of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show." Such
homogeneity of content goes beyond entertainment into news.
In the 1980s the New York Post, which at the time had a
greater circulation than the New York Times, attempted to
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solicit advertising from Blooaingdale's . in declining to
advertise, Bloomingdale's reportedly explained: "'[The
Times ]' readers are our customers; your readers are our
shoplifters" (Baker 1994). It follows that if one wishes to
court advertisers such as Bloomingdale's, one needs to

deliver an upscale audience. News, which is, after all,
advertiser supported, will tend to be slanted toward the
interests of the wealthy in order to maintain its

advertising "subsidy." This system ends up being self-
perpetuating and circular in nature, i.e., viewers of many
cable channels get no news at all, others get news slanted
to their specific interests. Baker (1994) explains this

effect:
If, as studies report, media usage promotes political

involvement, particularly among those to whose
political interests the media respond, and if, as
economic analysis predicts, advertising leads the media
to be oriented toward the more affluent, then the
advertising-supported media should stimulate political
participation primarily among the comparatively
affluent. Thus, advertising's subsidy not only
distributes news in an even less egalitarian manner
than would a market system where readers (audiences)
pay the full costs...but it also quite likely depresses
the comparative political participation of the poor
(Baker 1994, 69).
Thus far in this chapter, we have discussed how

segmentation has, by and large, failed to deliver its
promised benefits to consumers, or at least the benefits of

segmentation have been greatly weighted in favor of
business; how advertising in its attempts to position

products to appeal to segments has attempted to influence
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consumption both in terms of aggregate and specific brand
demand; issues of privacy and control; and some of the
ramifications of a fragmented society as these fragments
relate to the media. To conclude the chapter let us turn to
one final problem identified by segmentation critics and how
business has responded to this criticism/opportunity: the

environment.
Green.. Green. Its Green. They Sav
The environmental movement as we recognize it today,
began in the 1960s with the recognition that our lakes,

streams, rivers and the very air we breathed were becoming
increasingly, for lack of a better word, dirty. More

specifically, many identify the birth date of
environmentalism in the U.S. as 1962, when The silent Spring
by Rachel Carson was published (Adler 1995; Sale 1993;
Worster 1993). Pollution awareness grew rapidly and massive
efforts were undertaken to clean up the air and water. In a
generally bi-partisan effort Congress enacted laws designed

to safeguard the environment and to force business to phase
in pollution controls (e.g., gas emission standards).
Business, by and large, was not enamored of these

developments. Some simply took their factories off shore
(Leiss 1976), others resisted standards and lobbied Congress
for deadline roll-backs and/or defunding enforcement

agencies. But the environmentalists were persistent and as
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smog began to disappear and rivers and lakes became clean
enough to actually swim in, they turned their attentions to
less visible targets: nuclear waste, depletion of the ozone
layer, etc. At the same time it began to dawn on people
that consumption was a significant part of the ecological
equation. Depletion of "scarce" resources (the oil "crisis"
of 1974 was an exclamation point) and literally mountains of
garbage began to be issues — by the late 1970s Americans

were each year junking 7 million cars, discarding some 30
billion bottles and 50 billion cans, and throwing away 30
million tons of paper (Barnouw 1978). By 1986, annual
American garbage production grew to 157.7 million tons, an
increase of 80 percent over 1960 production of 87.5 tons.
In 1987 the average American discarded 1,542 pounds of
garbage, twice as much as the average in West Germany or

Japan (Church 1988).
In addition to the quantity of products consumed,
critics began to focus on the variety of products offered,
requiring different packaging, "extra" features,
kaleidoscopic color options, etc. The general sense of
those concerned about such problems was "waste and excess."
During the same period as the garbage figures just cited the
industrially developed world, with one-third of the world's

population was using 90 percent of the planet's resource
production; the U.S. with five percent of total population
was using 27 percent of extracted materials (Leiss 1976).
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As should by now be manifest, segmentation exacerbates
this situation by encouraging both consumption in general
and by utilizing specious features to position substantively

generic products. For example, how many colors of laundry
soap do various segments demand?
Susan Strasser (1989) crystalizes the concerns and

criticisms of environmentalists:
Like King Gillette, urged by the bottle-cap inventor

to make his fortune by creating a disposable product,
modern manufacturers concentrate on the growth and
profitability of their firms. On a systemic level,
economic growth through marketing-driven production is
fueled by waste: extravagant packaging, disposables,
planned obsolescence and styling changes that create
markets for replacement products. When corporate
researchers develop ways to expand the volume of paper
towels or c o m flakes so they will take up more shelf
space and increase market share, the distribution
process uses more packaging materials, more trucks,
more petroleum, more supermarket and warehouse space
and labor, and more shopping bags, and it creates more
road congestion and more air pollution. The overall
goal of the marketing process remains to "grow the
market," however that may be done: with new products or
new packaging, by expanding the market geographically
or by getting people to use more of an existing
product. Prodded by regulators or irate citizen
groups, some individual manufacturers may alleviate
industrial pollution. But the sources of crisis go
well beyond the need for pollution controls (Strasser
1989, 290).
Business response was at best mixed (generally business

stonewalled) until it dawned on someone that
environmentalists were an untapped segment. Voila, "green

marketing" was born. Businesses scrambled all over
themselves to make environmental claims for their products.
By the beginning of this decade 80 percent of Americans
regarded themselves as environmentalists (Gutfield 1990), 75

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percent said a company's reputation with respect to the
environment influenced their purchase decisions, and eight

in ten said they would be willing to pay more for products
that are environmentally friendly (Klein 1990). Business
responded with green products, green packaging and even

green factories. From 1985 to 1990, green product
introductions increased at an average annual rate of more
than 100 percent (Klein 1990), and sales of green products

were estimated to total $8.8 billion by 1995 (Winski 1991).
Unfortunately, what determined whether a company was
green or not, or how green they were, was the company
itself. Product claims were profuse and confusing.

Packages were stamped "recyclable," "biodegradable," or
"ozone friendly." Consumers had no idea whether it was the
package or contents that were "recyclable" and if they were
able to ascertain which, they still had to understand what

"recyclable" meant (what is not recyclable, in cm absolute
sense?). A system of symbols was adopted consisting of
three bent arrows forming a circle. These arrows became
ubiquitous as environmental signals but few people had any

idea what they meant. When the arrows pointed clockwise it
signified that the package/product was made from recycled

material; when the arrows pointed counter-clockwise it
advertised the package/product as recyclable. Mo where was
there any indication how much of the material used to

produce the package/product had actually been reclaimed from
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recycled products and no where was there any indication how

much of the package/product could actually be utilized in a
recycling process.
Finally, in 1992, the FTC was forced to step in and
issue guidelines covering green claims. The new guidelines
specified what claims advertisers could make regarding
recycled content, and when such terms as recyclable, ozone
safe, ozone friendly, degradable, biodegradable, and
photodegradable could be used (Parrish 1992). Advertising

Age responded with a special section in the June 29, 1992
issue titled, "is Green Marketing Dead?"2 Citing a poll
conducted by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman in which a majority

of respondents said they were more likely to purchase a
product based on environmental claims, Advertising Age
decided that green marketing was not dead yet. The same
poll indicated that women and younger consumers were more

influenced by environmental claims. Predictably, marketers
saw this as an opportunity: "This shows that youth are a

very environmentally sensitive and aware group, and
important to marketers," according to Debra Cross, manager-
environmental affairs, Coca-Cola USA (Chase and Smith 1992,
S2). Both the Yankelovich poll and a 1991 Gallup survey

indicated that consumers have no real ideas about what
companies are leaders in the green movement. Gallup analyst
Gale Muller sees this as an opportunity for an "advertiser
to claim the title as his own” (Chase and Smith 1992).
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In April 1995 researchers from the University of Utah,
Oregon State university and the University of Illinois
published research concluding that more companies than ever
were making "recyclable" claims but that these claims were
used more as a consumer come-on rather than out of concern
for the environment fThe Reoister-Guard 1995). The research
showed a 36.2 percent increase in package labels claiming
their products to be "environmentally friendly,"
"environmentally safe," or "environmentally smart," since
September 1992. And many firms were still making vague

references to recycling, "Theoretically, anything is
recyclable," said Robert Mayer, project coordinator. "The
question is, 'Will it be recycled?'" fThe Reaister-Guard
1995, 7B). Mayer also questioned firms that claimed their
products were recyclable but distributed them in states
where there were no recycling facilities for that type of

product available.
Paul Hawken (1992) owner of Smith & Hawken, a garden
and horticulture catalog company, cites a similar instance

of corporate deviousness.
I recently saw an advertisement for Procter and Gamble

showing a disposable plastic diaper and a great mound
of rich, black compost, the kind of compost I have not
been able to make in 25 years as a gardener. And the
ad implied this compost was made of disposable diapers.
But when you read the fine print, you find out this
hasn't been done yet, that Proctor and Gamble is
offering money to municipalities to start pilot
programs for composting.
This is a munificent and generous act...But...this is

the same Proctor and Gamble that has fought proposals
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in Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Kentucky to tax

disposable diapers to pay for environmental cleanup.
In Kentucky it was a penny a diaper. As one legislator
said, "We've never seen so many $500 suits in
Kentucky" (Hawken 1992, 98).
By 1996 the FTC was forced to revisit its green

guidelines (Teinowitz 1996). Generally, the commission left
the guidelines alone while admonishing marketers to be more
specific. It advised advertisers using the "chasing arrows"
recycle symbol to make clear whether the product is

recyclable or made from recycled material, and to clarify
the percentage of recycled material in the product
(Teinowitz 1996).
Green marketing continues to gain in popularity. A

recent issue of the Journal of Marketing contained the
article, "Enviropreneurial Marketing Strategy: The Emergence
of Corporate Environmentalism as Market Strategy" (Menon and

Menon 1997). Generally speaking, when marketers start
inventing terms (enviropreneurial) one can generally be
confident that the topic under discussion is one of great

interest within the field.
To conclude this discussion of the environment, three
points need to be made. First, it is obvious that citizen
activism and government regulation can have an impact on

business actions. There can be no dispute that the Air
Quality Act of 1967 (commonly called the Clean Air Act), the
Federal Water Pollution Act (1972), the Endangered Species

• Act (1973), the Comprehensive Environmental Act (Superfund)
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of 1980 (McClain 1991), and the Environmental Protection
Agency have had positive effects on the environment and have
forced businesses to alter certain operating procedures,
sometimes dramatically. However, it seems that the chief
effect of citizen activism has been on government, not

directly on business. Business really began to react to
environmental concerns when consumers began to vote directly

with dollars.
Second, the processes and strategies of segmentation

are a direct contributor to environmental problems. The
production and consumption of commodities necessarily
results in residuals or waste products that must be

dissipated into the environment. The more commodities
consumed the more waste to dissipate. Leiss refers to these
residuals, or waste residues, as "discommodities" (1976,

33). Just as marketers segment markets, distinguishing
between buyer groups and communicating with them in
different ways (different: channels, different media,
different messages) so do business and marketers segment

commodities and discommodities, keeping them separate in
consumers' minds. Sometimes this segmentation is a function

of geography (move the means of production overseas) and
sometimes it is achieved through marketing claims, e.g.,

claim the product is recyclable — if the product is
recycled, it cannot end up in a landfill.
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Which leads us to point three: The overwhelming

response of marketers and advertisers to the environmental
movement has been to position their products as
environmentally friendly (whatever that means). Certainly
there are firms concerned about the environment and
consciously endeavor to minimize harm to the environment.

But the evidence indicates that the majority of firms have
looked on the green movement as a marketing opportunity and

have reacted in typical segmentation fashion by positioning,
rather than altering their production processes or products.

In other words, rather than becoming environmentally
friendly they have become friendly (pseudo)-

environmentalists.
This chapter has posited that the interpretation of
segmentation as a verb rather than a noun, and the focus on
positioning rather than differentiation, has resulted in

consumers being approached as a factor to be manipulated;
and that such manipulations have had adverse effects on

individuals in various areas, including an increased
emphasis on both generic and brand consumption, invasion of
privacy, attempts at social management, and fragmentation of
both media and society. Environmentalism as it relates to

business was examined in an attempt to demonstrate the
preeminence of positioning as a segmentation strategy.
In the next chapter the research streams of two
divergent disciplines, business and cultural industries.
will be examined paying particular attention to the business
literature and its approach to market segmentation.
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CHAPTER V
RESEARCH ON MARKET SEGMENTATION: TRENDS AND CONFLICTS
I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process

anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything
bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed,
or process anything sold or bought or processed, or
repair anything sold, bought or processed. You know,
as a career I don't want to do that.
— Lloyd Dobbler to his girlfriend's father in the
movie, "Say Anything..." (1989).
The business of America is business.
— U.S. President Calvin Coolidge
It seems likely that Calvin Coolidge would not, given

the opportunity, have called upon Lloyd Dobbler for a
campaign contribution. The schism between perspectives of
the two characters cited is reflective of the divide
existing between administrative and critical research

approaches. With apologies for just putting the cart before
the horse, or in this case, a conclusion before the research
question, explaining the organization of this chapter would

now seem appropriate.
Basically, the purpose of this chapter is to discuss

areas of congruence, or lack thereof, between what can be
broadly described as business or marketing research, and
cultural industries research. Such incondite terminology is
145
potentially problematic but, hopefully, intent will be
clarified as the discussion progresses.
The chapter is organised as follows: first, a statement

of the research objectives, followed by definitions of the
types of research surveyed. The essential findings are then
presented followed by a more comprehensive discussion of the
research streams prevalent in the business periodicals
examined. Specific issues within the respective research
areas are then explored in an attempt to both complement and
supplement topics discussed in previous sections of the

paper.
Research.Questions
The basic research question to be explored in this

chapter is to what extent does the business and cultural
industries' research overlap. In the process of

ascertaining this overlap the following sub-issues were
explored:
- does business research conform to what has been

defined as administrative research?
- what issues do the business and cultural industries

research streams have in common and;
- how are their perspectives similar or dissimilar?

- finally, what is significant about any
incongruencies identified?
Business research has been defined as marketing,
marketing management, consumer behavior, and advertising.
Marketing deals with the strategic implications of the
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business-consumer relationship; marketing management
involves the marketing mix, often referred to as the four

p's — product, price, place (distribution), and promotion.
To this one might add positioning, predilection, and
prescience. Positioning because the function of the four
p's in a segmentation strategy is to position products,

predilection because of the assumed or predicted preferences
of the target segment, and prescience because any marketing
research should have as a primary corollary predicting the
future. Consumer behavior is the focus and purpose of most
marketing research efforts, and advertising is the most
visible, if not the most important, part of the marketing

mix.
Cultural industries research, as it implies, is the
investigation of institutions, processes, systems, and
structures that create, reflect, reify, and promote culture
and cultural identity. As such, cultural industries

research is concerned with social power and who wields it.
Such power can be economic, political, systemic and/or
symbolic. Two paradigmatic umbrellas shade the field:
political economy and cultural studies, simplistically,
political economy tends to focus on system and structure (in
this case capitalism), the forces unleashed by the system,
and how the inertia toward perpetuating the system drives

economic entities to behave in certain ways, e.g., toward
monopolism and maintenance of the status quo. cultural

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studies is more concerned with the other side of the
equation; the manipulation of meaninq and sign, the symbolic

construction of society and audience interpretations (and
deconstruction) of proffered symbols. Much of media and
populist criticism irrupts somewhere in the gaps and
overlaps between the two paradigms and are also considered

as part of cultural industries research.
Administrative research (Lazarsfeld 1941) is an
approach (one might almost say an attitude) that focuses on
the "effects" of media content: Specific, measurable, short
term, individual, attitudinal and behavioral (Gitlin 1978).
The resulting conclusions depict media as relatively

impotent in terms of molding public opinion. An approximate
characterization of an administrative viewpoint of
communication as it has evolved today (although I suspect
that current practitioners might dispute the description)

would be a shotgun hypodermic: a large needle with a
dispersed spray pattern rather than a single stream; each

spray modified multiple times in the interim between
transmission and reception by mediating factors including
experts, opinion leaders, imprecise language, noise (partial
reception), method of transmission (visual, audio, cursive

and/or a combination thereof), etc., and the confounding
factor of receiver predispositions.
Lazarsfeld himself discounted the hypodermic model in

favor of a two-step theory of communication (Katz and
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Lazarsfeld 1955), although he qualified this assertion by
acknowledging that his early research did not involve
television and that it focused on short term effects.
However, Lazarsfeld's two-step theory is not inconsistent
with the shotgun hypodermic just proposed, particularly in
this era of segmented, fractionized, televisual dominated

media.
Joseph Klapper (1960), a student of Lazarsfeld's,
identified one strong effect that media could have in the
Lazarsfeld-Katz school of thought — reinforcement. Klapper
argued that media has its strongest effect in the
reinforcement of existing opinions. Klapper did suggest
that media could create opinions if no prior predisposition
existed, much as an artist is free to draw on a blank slate
(again, a hypodermic model), but even in such instances the
opinions tend to be isolated and not connected with more
powerful constructions, such as ideology. The point being

that media effects are minimal (for an overview of
administrative research, and Lazarsfeld's approach, see
Gitlin 1978). It should be noted that Lazarsfeld conducted
much of his research for media companies; as such he was
hired to discover information that would assist said
companies in facilitating (administering) their business
operations and maintaining the status quo; thus the name,

administrative research.
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Administrative research, then, focuses on the
individual and typically ignores historical and social

context.
In contrast, critical research, as exemplified by
political economy and cultural studies, acknowledges
historical perspective and attempts to put conditions and

theories within their social context. Hosco (1983) cites
three criteria by which communications research can be
categorized as critical. Critical research:
1. Challenges established perspectives; critical

research challenges both existing research paradigms and
traditional ways of viewing the media itself and what it
represents.
2. Studies the social context of communications;

critical research places media within its social context.
Typically this social context is stratified, thus, conflict
and power are prime areas of interest.
3. Promotes social transformation; critical research

offers alternative ways of examining media. It attempts to
place the present system in a state of crises.
Critical theorists postulate that empirical, or
administrative, theory both accepts and is accepted by the
established social order, while critical theory provides
commentarial analysis of on-going institutions and their

policies (Smythe 1984).
Research Method and Findings
As regards comparison of the business and cultural
industries school of thought, my approach was, in a sense,
dictated by my background. In the Kuhnian (Kuhn 1970)
150
tradition of acknowledging personal bias, I hereby
acknowledge that my recent training and inclinations place
me firmly in the political economy school of thought. As
such, I am aware of, and have been exposed to a vast
literature of critical research. However, I am not unaware
of and have been previously exposed to business literature
and research. My approach, then, was to reacquaint myself
with the latest in business research and compare and

contrast this research with critical perspectives.
In order to understand the latest in business thought,
three periodicals were selected for extensive review. The
Journal of Marketing is generally considered the most
prestigious academic journal pertaining to marketing
management and strategy. In the field of behavioral

research (in a business context), the Journal of consumer
Research is preeminent. Finally, both to get a non-academic

perspective and to focus on advertising, which as should be
obvious by now is critical to the study of market

segmentation, the trade journal Advertising Age was
selected. This weekly trade is universally regarded as the
central clearinghouse for news and opinion in the
advertising industry. For each of these three periodicals,

every article in every issue for the last five years was
perused. Less systematically, a variety of other
periodicals were examined including the Journal of
Advertising/ the Journal of Marketing Research. Adweek.
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MfidiflKSSk, Marketing NEWS, and Marketing and Media

Decisions. In addition various books, newspapers and
popular media were cross-referenced and consulted.
Finally, two business indexes were examined. One,

Business Periodical Index, a hard-copy index, was reviewed
for the last five years; and two, ABI/Inform. a computer
index was scanned over the previous ten year period. In

total over 40,000 articles were reviewed. The breakdown of
articles consulted is contained in Appendix B.

As stated, each of the articles in the Journal of
MacKe.ti.ng, Journal of Consumer Research and Advertising Age

was individually perused. The Business Periodicals Index
lists titles by topic: titles of specific interest, for
example, titles that seemed to connote a critical
perspective, were retrieved and read; articles that

indicated a traditional marketing perspective ("Target XXXXX
Market," "Why XXXX Ad Campaign Failed to Hit Its Mark") were
counted and included as part of the sampling frame.

ABI/Inform includes titles, abstracts and bibliographic
information. Each abstract was skimmed and any articles

that were in some way non-traditional (critical, unique) and
were available in the University of Oregon library were
retrieved and scanned.
Articles, abstracts and titles relating to market
segmentation were divided into three general categories.

First, those articles that were deemed strictly
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administrative. Typically, these articles could be
described as "how to," "here's an opportunity," or
"strategic implications." These articles comprised the vast
majority of the sample frame. A second type of article was
essentially administrative but interesting in that they were
concerned with hot or future trends such as environmental

marketing or the Internet; another area of interest were
articles that argued for a mass market rather than a
segmentation approach — these works were studied for their
reasoning and theoretical implications. Lastly, articles
that were in some way critical were studied for the types of
criticisms they offered to be specifically compared with

cultural industries critical theories.
Results dramatically demonstrate that over fifty years

after Lazarsfeld coined the concept, business literature is
overwhelmingly, staggeringly administrative. Less than

one-tenth of a percent of the articles could be construed as
in any way critical. Of these critical articles, those
concerned with market segmentation could all be grouped as
specific ethical dilemmas. These ethical oversights were
easily categorized into three distinct groups: 1) privacy
issues (e.g., Bloom, Milne, and Adler 1994; Guy 1997); 2)

inappropriate targets — usually children (e.g., Mazis et
al. 1992; Mizerski 1995; Pollay et al. 1996); and 3)
segmentation based on inappropriate parameters, e.g., racial
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or minority discrimination (e.g., Davidson 1995; Pol lay,

Lee, and Carter-Whitney 1992).
Even while identifying ethical lapses, the tone of the
articles remained consistently administrative. For example,
one study investigated the use of young models in cigarette
advertisements. The implicit assumption was that these ads
were targeting youth and this was unseemly. The conclusion,
however, was that young models appeal equally to young and
older audiences, "Therefore, cigarette advertisers' use of
young models could be judged as an effective strategy for
cultivating younger as well as older markets" (Mazis,
Ringold, Perry, and Denman 1992, 35). Another article
investigating new information technologies advised marketers
to exercise care in the use of these technologies (e.g.,
invading individual's privacy) in order to avoid becoming,
"...embroiled in costly litigation or targeted for protests
by activist organizations" (Bloom, Milne, and Adler 1994,

107).
Nor were marketers/advertisers unanimous in supporting
solutions to these ethical problems, or even recognizing
them as such, no matter how watered down they were. Various
techniques were reviewed on how to better target children
(e.g., Peracchio 1992; Stipp 1993). One article focused on
how much better advertisers were portraying women,
particularly as they gained an "appreciation for females and
their buying power" (Rubel 1996). Another commentary about
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cigarette advertising said, quite plainly, ignore the
messages — "Don't Blame Cigarette Ads, Enforce the Law on

Minors" (Rotfeld 1994).
But by far the most stunning finding of this research

is that in over 40,000 articles and abstracts reviewed, not
one single piece criticized market segmentation as a
concept. Segmenters were criticized as matter of course for
mistakes made in segmenting — predominantly strategical,
much more rarely ethical. The few researchers that
advocated remassifying the audience did not imply a
criticism of segmentation as a concept; rather, a la
Porter's (1980) typology, the suggestion was that since
everyone else is segmenting, perhaps there are cost benefits
and competitive advantages in pursuing a mass market
strategy. No one, however, criticized the purpose of
segmentation on ethical, moral, or social grounds.
Segmentation was considered natural, effective, suitable,

even laudable. One research pair stated, "We consider
fragmentation an emancipatory response to the totalizing
logic of the market" (Firat and Venkatesh 1995, 255).

In comparison, cultural industries research is most
definitely critically oriented. Researchers have identified

many problems correlated with market segmentation: excesses
and abuses related to advertising; societal addiction to

consumption; cultural commodification; rampant materialism;
privacy intrusions; fragmentation and stratification;
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differential access to information; etc. But whereas

business focuses on segmentation as a strategy, cultural
industries fails to recognize the strategic implications of
segmentation. As such, cultural critics generally fail to
recognize segmentation as an antecedent or intermediary
contributing to, and exacerbating the problems they have

identified.
This is not to suggest that the analyses and

conclusions reached by cultural industries are in some way
wrong or flawed. It is to suggest that adopting a
segmentation perspective may enrich and enhance the

resulting analysis, or to borrow Smythe's (1977)
terminology, it may be that cultural industries research has
a blindspot where market segmentation is concerned.
Consider semiology and the study of advertising symbols
(e.g., Williamson 1978; Goffman 1979). This research has

provided a wealth of insight and understanding as to how
advertising manipulates symbols and signs to generate

meaning and, advertisers hope, prompt consumers to respond
appropriately. Yet little, if any, consideration is given
to the thesis that advertisers may have developed such

symbolic representations because of the necessity to
position products to target psychographically derived
segments.
Similarly, various authors have identified the inherent

surveillance capabilities of new information technologies
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(Robins and Webster 1988; Gandy 1993) but their focus tends
to be on what these new technologies are capable of rather
than what is driving the use and expansion of research
capabilities — market segmentation, others have identified
technology as the impetus behind media fragmentation
(Sinclair 1987), advertising proliferation (McAllister
1996), and the relationship between flexible production and
symbolic commodities (Garnham 1990).

In each case, segmentation is undervalued as a
potential contributor to the identified problem. To
reiterate, it is not being argued that adopting segmentation
as the foundation of the above studies is necessary;
instead, what is being suggested is that approaching these
topics from the perspective of segmentation may provide
insights currently being overlooked and that considering
many cultural, societal and information problems from the
standpoint of segmentation strategy will create some common
ground from which to possibly relate to business research.
That business research is administrative is

incontrovertable. Not only are the research topics chosen
and conclusions reached supportive of the status quo but the

methodologies utilized are overwhelmingly individual
effects, positivist oriented. In contrast, that cultural
industries research is critical is indisputable. In part
the demarcation between the two approaches is derivative.

As Dallas Smythe posits,
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The basis for distinguishing critical and

administrative theory and research is in (1) the kinds
of problems chosen for study; (2) the kinds of
research methods used in the study; and (3) the
ideological predisposition of the researcher either to
criticize and try to change the existing politico-
economic order or to defend and strengthen it (Smythe
1984, 206).
Smythe's delimiting criteria serve as a jumping off
point for the next area of discussion — identifying
specific issues that business and cultural industries
research have in common and analysis of how the respective
approaches differ in their perspectives.
Interesting Issues: Commonality and Contradiction
Germination of Critical Perspective

Within the Business Literature?
A particularly interesting theme within the marketing
literature is the ongoing debate as to whether marketing is
a science (Converse 1945; Alderson and Cox 1948; Bartels

1951; Buzzell 1963; Taylor 1965; Hunt 1976; Anderson 1983;
Peter and Olson 1983; Arndt 1985; Muncy and Fisk 1987). The
debate generally ensues with an attempt to make the
theoretical distinction between science and nonscience, or
what Popper describes as the "problem of demarcation"
(Popper 1962, 42), and then focuses on questions of
methodology, i.e., positivism and its two main offshoots —
logical empiricism and falsification — versus relativism
(Brodbeck 1982; Hunt 1982; Peter and Olson 1983; Anderson
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1983; Olson 1987; Muncy and Fisk 1987). The discussion of
methods has, at times, become rather esoteric with

digressions into methods including constructionalism,
scientific realism, functionalism, structuralism, arch
rationalism, and epistemological anarchy (Feyerabend 1975;
Stent 1975; Hacking 1982; Peter and Olson 1983; Muncy and
Fisk 1987; Zinkhan 1987). The basic point of contention is
does method constitute, to paraphrase Popper, the line of

demarcation? in other words, is scientific inquiry
restricted to, and delimited by, empirical, observable,
testable, quantitative theories and methods. This attempt
to define science from below is essentially reductive and

hebetudinous.
Two things make this debate of interest. First,
cultural industries research has been the target of
"scientists" decrying its research methods as overly

relativistic, untestable and, therefore, ultimately
unenlightening. Cultural industry's researchers have
responded by more rigorously defining their methods (see,

e.g., Murdock and Golding 1973; Curran, Gurevitch and
Woollacott 1982; Hall 1982; Real 1986; Mosco 1996) and by
critiquing the underpinnings of positivist research as it

has been traditionally applied to media and information
(Williams 1977; Gitlin 1978; Murdock 1982). Thus, cultural
industries research has suffered the same slings and arrows
as have those within the field of marketing who continue to
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advocate humanistic inquiry (Hirschman 1986). Similarly,
marketing researchers wishing to legitimize approaches not

adhering to positivist tenets have also rigorously defined
and justified such research methods using many of the same
arguments as cultural industries researchers. Generally,

the marketing humanists do not take the next step of
critiquing positivist approaches. Rather, they offer
humanistic modes of inquiry as complementary and
supplementary to the established research norms in the

field.
Second, if we accept Smythe's assertion that critical
and administrative research are distinguished, in part, by

the methods they use, then as marketing's reliance on the
positivist methods and ethos of the physical sciences
lessens, there exists the possibility of truly critical
analysis. Certainly the vast majority of marketers remain

wedded to empiricism, realism and quantificationism, but as
segmentation has grown in stature and as its niches have
increasingly zeroed in on social-situational context, the

pressure to utilize humanistic modes of inquiry to address
socially constructed phenomena builds (Hirschman 1986).
Examples of such research within the marketing literature

continue to maintain an administrative viewpoint, but the
mere fact that such approaches are becoming more accepted is
a significant step.2
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Segmenting the Mass, and Massing the Segments
Marketing research advocating a remassif ication of the

market is interesting in that it raises an essential
contradiction within the business literature; that is, no
matter how much marketers, advertisers and media focus on
segmentation, there is a constant pressure to attract more
consumers. While much lip service is spent on the
advantages of more narrowly targeting smaller and smaller

niches, the reality is that no business can survive on a
market of one. Further, there is constant pressure on
business, whether it be manufacturing, service, or media, to
grow. In order to do this, business must attract larger
segments, or more segments by positioning generic products
differently for different segments, or convince members of a
segment to consume more by positioning products for
different, overlapping use patterns. Thus, terms such as

maxi-niching have become more prevalent in the literature.
One example of maxi-niching is gerontographics.
Gerontographics refers to a segmentation approach targeting

the mature market. As the baby boom generation ages, the
mature market will certainly qualify as a maxi-niche, the
question is can one accurately describe the mature market as
a segment or is it really just a mass market with all that

that entails?
Segments, as they sure generally characterized, are by
definition finite in size. If a marketer identifies a
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segment — some group or cluster consisting of individuals
who share some characteristics that make them cohere as a
segment and distinct from other segments — then the size of
the segment is restricted to those people who share the

discriminating character istic(s), excluding evolutionary
factors such as population growth or changing demographics.
Marketers are thus faced with the problem of expanding the
size of segments and/or attracting consumers from other
segments. This is accomplished in basically two ways.
First, segments are created using symbolic and referential
appeals. This is the approach discussed previously in
regard to the "Pepsi Generation.” Rather than appealing to
a finite segment of individuals aged, for example, 11 to 23,
Pepsi chose to create a segment of all those individuals of
all ages who "think young” (whatever that means). Thus,
they have created, rather than identified, a segment and in

the process greatly expanded the size of their target
market. Second, firms appeal to different segments by
positioning their products in different ways. Quite

frequently, this is done by the expedient of advertising in
various outlets that target different segments, often using
the same advertising messages. In this instance, the

segmentation is not based on the product or the appeal but
on the medium used to deliver the message.
Media are particularly vulnerable to this segment-mass
market contradiction. As just mentioned, media are often
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the primary device used to segment audiences, which speaks

to the increasing fractionization of media. But at the same
time, ad rates are still determined by audience size. As
such, media outlets are under dual pressure to produce the
"right" audience and more audience period. A recent

Internet start-up company illustrates this conflict.
PowerAgent is a company that purports to match advertisers
with consumers interested in the ad messages, i.e., one-to-

one marketing. The company will target prospective
customers by collecting standard demographic data such as

ZIP code, age and gender, and hopes to sign up thousands of
users. Ads are then solicited and made available to

customers who self-select the ads to which they wish to be
exposed. Advertisers are charged on a cost per thousand
exposure basis (Bruner 1997). Notice the essential
contradiction: using the Internet, which has traditionally
been an individual user-oriented medium, PowerAgent offers
advertisers the opportunity to (theoretically) target

individual consumers, yet the company can only be successful
if it delivers a mass audience to a site offering
standardized ad messages.
Other media outlets reflect this dichotomy.

Nickelodeon was created to target children ages two to 15.
They discovered, however, that this left them with a bit of
a viewership problem in the evening when their target
audience was all in bed; thus, Nick at Nite was born. MTV
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began with a music video format targeting basically
teenagers (Meehan 1984b). The channel now offers a variety
of programming and targets ages 12 to 34 (Advertising Age
1997b).
Structurally, this segment-mass conundrum is dealt with
via increased conglomeration. Institutional growth is
accomplished by acguiring more media outlets, targeting more
segments. Theoretically, conglomeration could allow more
specific targeting by lessening the pressure on an
individual media outlet to grow, rather focusing on growth
at the corporate level, each added segment contributing to
that growth. Synergistic effects with corporate parents
engineering cross-fertilization efforts among media can also

significantly contribute to growth.
Business research approaches these issues strictly from
a strategic standpoint at the individual business/media
level. Strategically, the focus is on individual products
being targeted at specific segments utilizing specific media
and advertising messages, conglomerate control is a non
issue. Cultural industries research is precisely concerned
with the conglomeration of media (and business) and what
this means in societal terms: power and control, democratic
institutions, information access, symbolic construction of

society and how people construe, adapt to, and utilize such
symbols. Again, we see an essential difference between
business and cultural industries perspective: business is
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concerned with individual effects, the response of
individuals to strategic manipulations and how such
machinations result in purchasing decisions and consumption

behavior; cultural industries is concerned with the societal
implications of consumption and the institutional structures
that facilitate the propagation of a consumption ideology.
Segmentation Systems
The methods used to segment consumers, such as those

reviewed in Chapter III, have come under criticism from both
business and cultural industries. Broad-based national

segmentation systems, whether they be based on
geodemographics (PRIZM) or psychographics (VALS), or

longitudinal survey research (Monitor), all rely on averages
to both segment and describe the resulting niches. Such

averages, while easy to understand and informative in their
own way, are ultimately generalizations that mask
difference, stereotype individuals and are essentially
misleading. Marketer Rebecca Piirto addresses this problem,
Fairfield, Connecticut, and Beverly Hills, California,

may both qualify as Blue Blood Estates communities,
but they are very different places.. .Local styles and
traditions and differences in household types,
ethnicity, and locally produced products do not show
up in the clusters (Piirto 1991, 237).
Again, business sees this as a strategic problem.
Cultural industries is, conversely, concerned with the
effects that clustering has on individuals and society.
Segmentation ignores traditional social boundaries such as

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geographic proximity or political descriptions and replaces

these with the logic of demographic and psychographic
identity. This results in what cultural critic Richard
Maxwell terms the "labeling aesthetic" (1996, 118). Lash
and Urry (1994) concur with Maxwell in theorizing that
collective identity has been freed from such traditional

social bases as citizenship, class affiliation, the nuclear
family, etc. Instead, networks of information and
communication, where market research holds a key position,
unite the world into life style categories. Marketers and
advertisers conduct their activities based on this labeling
aesthetic which they have organized into metaphorical

figures who stand in for citizens (Maxwell 1996). Under the
labeling aesthetic individuated assessments diminish,
diversity is forced into the framework of values and life
styles and then these "invented identities" are reinforced

as the aesthetic becomes the target for advertisers, market
researchers, ratings firms, manufacturers and other cultural

industries (Larson 1992). Individuals' responses are
channeled and directed by the communications directed at
them and by the cultural conception of consumer versus
citizen. The term consumer is itself an aesthetic label,

literally created during the industrial revolution to
transform, both figuratively and literally, citizens who
happened to be customers into consumers. "Only in the
instance of an individual ad was consumption a question of
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what to buy. In the broader context of a burgeoning
commercial culture, the foremost political imperative was
what to dream” (Ewen 1976, 109).
Thus far, we have examined the potential for business
literature to adopt a critical perspective and have
theorized that as segmentation efforts continue to emphasize
socially constructed niches, the pressure to use more
humanistic modes of inquiry will heighten. Next, the
contradictory pressures to both more narrowly target
segments and to expand markets/audiences was discussed as
one factor contributing to the increased conglomeration of
the media. Finally, criticisms of segmentation typologies
from both business and cultural industries were considered.
Cultural industries research was concerned with the
ramifications on individuals and society of clustering
techniques that replace traditional social boundaries with
artificial aesthetics. Business was more concerned with
overcoming the shortcomings of segmentation systems by
gathering more information, which leads directly into the

next topic.
Privacy Revisited
Marketers' response to the problems of segmentation

systems, principally the problem of averages obscuring
differences among consumers, is to turn to market research
for more and more in-depth information, digging down deeper
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into the personal lives of individuals. No longer are focus
groups and surveys sufficient; respondents are now asked to
engage in decoupage exercises and crayon coloring to judge
emotional responses (hot colors for stress and anger, cool

colors for satisfaction and calm). Explains Jim Spaeth,
president of the Advertising Research Council, the race is

on to find methods that dig beyond what consumers can
articulate to what's "deeper in their mind" (as quoted by

Kaufman 1997, 48). Market researchers have paid families to
set up cameras in their homes to observe product usage and

families have actually allowed market researchers to move
into their homes to observe them firsthand. Andy

Greenfield, president of Greenfield Consulting, describes an
even more intrusive technique he calls "ambush research."
Say a beer company wants to test a new product to compete
with upscale microbrews. Greenfield goes to a bar

frequented by the target market, for example, male Yuppies
age 21 to 26, and arranges with the bartender and waitress
to assist him in his subterfuge. He then approaches a man

or a couple and poses as a researcher doing research on some
unrelated subject — global warming or local zoning
ordinances — and offers to buy the couple a beer for
assisting him in his project. The waitress, as prearranged,

then brings over a couple of Greenfield's brand instead of
the microbrew the couple had ordered. If the male accepts
the beer, Greenfield gathers data on his reaction, if he

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declines, Greenfield gets heat-of-the-moment information on
why he refuses to even try the new beer (Kaufman 1997).
The Internet has provided another source for increased
data gathering. Many sites ask for more information about
users in order "to serve them better." This voluntarily

revealed information can then be cross-correlated with other
data bases to give a more complete view of the individual.
Just visiting a site can result in more information

gathering. Much as if an individual followed you around all
day and night observing where you went, how long you looked
at an item, and what you purchased, so does the Net observe
and record such interactions. Visit a Web site for medical

information and it is not unlikely that you will soon
receive brochures from clinics, insurance companies,
pharmaceutical firms, etc.
Such surveillance techniques constitute what Oscar

Gandy refers to as "the panoptic sort." In the case of
market research, the panoptic sort serves to segment and

stratify consumers according to their usefulness for
merchandisers (Gandy 1993).
The panoptic sort takes its name from a device invented

by Jeremy Bentham at the end of the 18th century called the
Panopticon. The Panopticon is a building — applicable to

schools, prisons, asylums, factories — designed to
facilitate universal, uninterrupted and unobserved

surveillance. Basically, the building is circular in shape
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with a tower in the middle where the observer is ensconced.
The basic premise is that the observer can see out of his
tower but those being observed cannot see in, thus they
never know when they are actually being watched (Robins and
Webster 1988).
Michel Foucault expands on the idea of the Panoptica 1
eye by emphasizing how technology has overcome the
limitations of the Panopticon machine,
Our society is one not of spectacle, but of

surveillance; under the surface of images, one invests
bodies in depth; behind the great abstraction of
exchange, there continues the meticulous, concrete
training of useful forces; the circuits of
communication are the supports of an accumulation and a
centralization of knowledge; the play of signs defines
the anchorages of power; it is not that the beautiful
totality of the individual is amputated, repressed,
altered by our social order, it is rather that the
individual is carefully fabricated in it, according to
a whole technique of forces and bodies (as quoted in
Poster 1990, 93).
Today's technology enables a kind of Superpanopticon, a
system of surveillance without boundaries or physical

presence. And the populace has been trained to participate
in this surveillance process — Social Security numbers,
drivers licenses, credit cards are a fact of life. All
transactions are recorded, encoded and added to data bases
(Poster 1990). The idea of the Superpanopticon, omnipresent
but not site specific, is an essential reorganization of

time and space. Increased ability to store and process data
have decreased the logic of local; a new geography based on
Foucault's "circuits of communication" redefines boundaries
170
based on consumption groups and life style configurations.
"Any such reorganization of space and time is also a
reorganization of the way power is expressed" (Maxwell 1996,

121 ).
Such observations and analyses are, apparently, beyond

the purview of business researchers. Their quest for more
information and more in-depth consumer profiles is single-

minded and dogged. Despite infrequent warnings among
various colleagues that more intrusive information gathering
techniques may result in consumer backlash or even

government intervention, examples abound of just such
decidedly more intrusive techniques. Thus business seems in
a bit of a quandary as to how to gather the greater amounts
of information they think they need and how to do so in an

unintrusive way. Their solution seems to be to opt for
unobtrusive, rather than unintrusive, and let the chips fall

where they may.
Critical Theory in Consumer Behavior
Interestingly, while actual critical research within

the fields of marketing, advertising and consumer behavior
are practically non-existent, there has been some discussion
of critical theory within the marketing and consumer

behavior literature. Such articles have discussed critical
theory (Kilbourne 1987, 1989; Uusitalo 1989) and advocated
the use of critical theory in future research (Belk 1988;

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Sherry 1991). One feminist critique analyzed the 1980 and
1990 volumes of the Journal of Consumer Research to
demonstrate the dominance of masculine ideology in consumer

research (Hirschman 1993).
Murray and Ozanne (1991) set out to define critical
theory, grounding it in the works of the "Frankfurt School"
and the subsequent work of Jurgen Habermas. They then

propose a process by which critical theory can be applied to
consumer behavior research and identify constituencies
(academic, public interest, and private interest) that would
benefit from a critical theory perspective.

Hetrick and Lozada (1994) criticized the interpretation
of the Frankfurt School offered by Murray and Ozanne as too
conservative and proposed that any real application of

critical theory must specifically include a critique of
capitalism. Hetrick and Lozada go on to suggest that the

future of critical theory as a theoretical tool may lie in
postmodern considerations. They quote Kellner (1989) in his

suggestion that critical theory must recognize the
importance of postmodernists' vision of the primacy of
consumption and consequently, "must now deepen and expand
its critiques of the consumer society to demonstrate the
failures and limitations of contemporary capitalism"

(Hetrick and Lozada 1994, 556).
Such discussions offer promise for expanding the
horizons of business research. However, the inertia of the
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dominant paradigm (administrative research) will be

difficult to overcome.
Critical Outlook, Administrative Conclusions
Articles within the business literature fairly often

propose what would seem to be a critical premise but
approach it using the tools of administrative research. Not

surprisingly, the resulting conclusions tend to be
administrative. Two examples follow.
Richins and Dawson (1992) proposed to evaluate the

construct and measurement of materialism. Materialism has
been criticized on many levels including causes and

diffusion, personal and social ramifications, moral
consequences, etc. The authors developed a scale to measure
materialism; administered it to a sample of college
students; tested for reliability, validity and social
desirability bias; and concluded that materialism should be
conceptualized as a consumer value. They then call for
future research on materialism, "Such research should
investigate the potential positive effects of materialism as

well as the negative ones more frequently mentioned in the
literature" (Richins and Dawson 1992, 314).
Contrary to Hetrick and Lozada (1994), and their belief

that a combination of the approaches of the Frankfurt School
and postmodemity could rejuvenate critical theory, Firat
and Venkatesh proffer what they call "liberatory

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postmodernism" (1995, 244). Liberatory postmodernism

rejects the constraints of modernism, specifically the
distinction between consumption and production. Modernism,
according to the authors, views the consumer and consumption

solely in terms of the market logic, thus, consumption and
production occur simultaneously; each act of production
resulting in consumption and vice versa. Different
consumption patterns produce different mentalities, but all

incorporate a consumer willing to be commodified and
objectified, to be consumed by the system. Postmodernism
does not question this condition, rather it attaches no
stigma to objectification, refusing to dwell on binary

categories such as object/subject, but seeking to liberate
the construction of all from imposed narratives and myths.
Firat and Venkatesh thus posit that the postmodern

conditions that best describe consumers are fragmentation
and decenteredness. They view this fragmentation as
emancipatory, freeing consumers from linear or hierarchical
conformity, and offering them a range of choices previously
unimaginable. Ultimately, this freedom of choice allows

consumers to construct their own reality, selecting and
using symbols to customize herself/himself to articulate

her/his visions of life.
The construct of liberatory postmodernism, which

specifically rejects the tenets of what Firat and Venkatesh
term critical postmodernism (1995, 244), is essentially an

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administrative approach. Focusing on individual effects,

and arguing that the hegemony of the market is decreasing in
this era of postmodernity, the authors are implicitly
suggesting that the status quo, admittedly an evolving
status quo, but essentially the status quo all the same,
should remain in place.
Critical postmodernists, or a critical assessment of
postmodernism, will take a different point of view. For

example, David Harvey (1989) assigns critical importance to
the compression of time and space and the resultant
alteration of how we view ourselves and others. Compression
of space and time has resulted in a certain ephemerality, a
transitory context in which image is all; form over content,

aesthetic over ethic, being over becoming.
Consumption, from this point of view, is characterized
by the growing commoditization of everyday life,
...typified by the marketing of products as

lifestyles; the slick packaging of corporations
themselves as benevolent, "people"-oriented techno-gods
of the Information Age; and the increasing importance
of advertising and marketing (and hence semiotics) to
the economy (Kauffman, Robinson, and Rosenthal 1991,
54).
The "self" becomes more fragmented and incomplete,
composed of multiple identities based on what particular

social world is inhabited at a given point in time. The
dominance of image, appearance, and surface effect over
depth has resulted in a blurring of the distinction between
image and reality, a preference for the popular and the
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decorative over the functional. The postmodern condition
also addresses a decline in our collective sense of history,

the slippage of stable meanings and the proliferation of
difference.
In such a world the production of cultural images takes
on paramount importance and who controls the media, and thus
the production process, is in a unique position to promote
the types of images required by the precepts of flexible
production and accumulation. Without belaboring the point,

it has been well documented that fewer and fewer globally
oriented communications conglomerates control media access

worldwide (Bagdikian 1992; Schiller 1989).
Control of image production is important not only

because of the type of images that are produced but because
it enables the promotion of the concept of image. Consider,
for example, the quest to reduce turnover time in
production, always a crucial concern in profit maximization,
and part of what lies behind the push to flexibility. In

order for speed-up in production to result in increased
profits, there must be a concomitant speed-up in
consumption. Therefore, a key commercial application of

postmodernism is to reduce turnover time of fashion and fads
and to devote increased resources to the production of
images (which have the advantage, compared to durable goods,
of almost instantaneous consumption time) (Harvey 1989).
Baudrillard views these symbols, which he characterizes as

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hyperreality of simulations, as consisting of commodity

signs, images divorced from content or substance, and media
spectacles. He posits that the Marxian notion of the
fetishism of commodities has been replaced in a postmodern
world with the fetishism of the sign (Baudrillard 1981;

1983).
Which brings us to marketing, and more specifically,
market segmentation. To reiterate, postmodernism is at
essence a process of being. Postmodernism rejects form,
purpose, design; it embraces indeterminacy and chance.
Postmodernism is, therefore, not concerned with becoming

anything. Rather, it is concerned with being in a state of
constant flux and change. Is there any other environment

for which segmentation could be better suited?
Flexible accumulation and flexible production both make

segmentation feasible and contribute to its proliferation.
Postmodernism's acknowledgment of "the multiple forms of
otherness as they emerge from differences in subjectivity,

gender and sexuality, race and class, temporal
(configurations of sensibility) and spatial geographic
locations and dislocations" in a sense defines what
segmentation is and has become (Huyssens 1984). The concept
of simulacra (Harvey 1989, 300-303) is in many ways a

distillation of segmentation's goal — vicarious enjoyment
of a self-image in large measure created and communicated by

products. You are what you own. In a very real sense, the
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simulacra thus becomes the reality. The triumph of the
aesthetic over the ethic not only promotes being over
becoming it promotes a powerlessness, a rudderless disunity
whereby consumption purports to provide some meaning and
value to one's individual existence. But being is a never
ending, constantly fluctuating phenomenon; thus, continued

consumption is necessary to provide new meanings to the
state of changed being.
Marketing and advertising tend to take on almost

Machiavellian overtones in such a construction. A sense of
manipulation is pervasive to the extent that it seems likely

that most observers would find the intent and effect of
advertising and segmentation to be at least slightly

onerous.
However, when considering consumption and advertising,

it is important to remember that these phenomena cannot be
viewed in isolation, they are but a part of the total ebb
and flow of cultural and societal forces. As Michael

Schudson points out.
Advertising is but one factor among many in shaping

consumer choice and human values. The question,
ultimately, is not one of how many people independently
arrive at a set of desires. Desires are never
independently arrived at, but are socially
constructed....What is the sum of the influence of
advertising, family, school, government policy, and the
promotional efforts of private industries on personal
values? How does a nation that assigns more
independent decision making authority to private
enterprise than does any other developed country in the
world shape desire and form or deform human
preferences? (Schudson 1984, 241).
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Schudson is unlikely to consider himself a
postmodernist, but his position is consistent with

postmodernist theory and offers a cogent counter-point to
the individual emancipation theory proposed by Firat and
Venkatesh. Consumption does not occur in isolation, rather

it is framed by the socio-cultural forces that both inform
life style and taste, and dictate norms and values.
Sum m ary
This chapter has offered evidence suggesting that
business research remains substantially administrative in
approach. Specifically, as regards market segmentation, the

research considered (for the most part in the last five
years) was uniformly administrative. However, there is
within the marketing literature an ongoing debate as to

approaches and methods appropriate to "scientific"
endeavors. It can be argued that a major impetus to this

debate is the evolution of segmentation techniques and their
emphasis on psychological and socio-situational context to
divide and categorize markets. Humanistic/relativistic

research approaches are particularly applicable to such
segmentation efforts and while the few examples of
humanistic research undertaken retain an administrative
point of view, there has also been a growing literature

examining critical theory. Returning to Smythe's (1984)
discrimination between critical and administrative theory
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and research — the kinds of problems chosen, the types of
methods used, the ideological predisposition of the

researcher — one wonders if opening the door to more
critically oriented research techniques may inevitably lead
to the examination of problems outside the purview of the
administrative paradigm and ultimately to a more critical
perspective, or, in the terms of Thomas Kuhn (1970) a

paradigm shift. Only time will tell.
180
CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
Calvin, "In this issue, Chewing reviews the new gum

chewing apparel. This jersey is made with swet-tek
fibers that wick away perspiration! The mesh collar
keeps your sternomastoids ventilated and the zippered
pockets hold spare gum and wrappers!"
Hobbes, "Why is it covered in logos?"
Calvin, "That gives you the psychological edge of

pretending you're sponsored."
Hobbes (scanning the magazine), "How can you tell if

you're reading an advertisement, a product review, or
the product itself?"
Calvin, "I'd sure like to be a walking endorsement."

— "Calvin & Hobbes," a popular U.S. comic strip
The figures for the last quarter are in. We made

significant gains in the fifteen-to-twenty-six-old age
group, but we lost our immortal souls.
— Cartoon in The New Yorker
This study has attempted to approach the topic of
market segmentation from a non-reductionist, overdetermined
perspective (Mosco 1996). To view segmentation in
isolation, simplistically, in a cause and effect dichotomy
is to ignore the historic, systemic, social, and cultural

factors that overlap, interact and in some instances,
determine segmentation strategies and implications.
Segmentation is, in essence, a marketing strategy.
Marketing is but one aspect of the business enterprise in
181
the U.S., operating within a capitalist system and answering
to many "publics" — government, customer, stockholder,

employee, citizen, etc. Marketing utilizes strategic
factors (product, distribution, price, promotion) to
position offerings to appeal to the market and segments
within. Each of these factors can be manipulated —

multiple product offerings using various distribution
outlets differentially priced to appeal to different markets

and promoted via different vehicles and using different
messages — to not only appeal to different segments but to

actually segment the market. Market and advertising
research have become increasingly importsuit in order to

identify, target and appeal to segments. As should by now
be manifest, segmentation is a multi-layered process

operating within an economic, social and cultural framework;
driven by business imperatives, utilizing various strategic

and research tools, and having various effects, both
intended and unintended.
To view one aspect or another pertaining to

segmentation in isolation (e.g., media fractionization,
advertising excess, increasing commercialization and
commodification) is to undervalue both the complexity of the

process and to misunderstand the forces driving segmentation
and its resulting ramifications. This study, by consciously
encompassing both the business and cultural industries
182
literature, has attempted to acknowledge this complexity and
the impulse to segment.
Segmentation is in no sense a new strategy. In fact,

there are those who argue that most modern marketing
practices are nothing of the kind (Fullerton 1988), and that
many of the abuses related to segmentation have been in
existence for quite some time. For example, University of
Michigan law professor Arthur Miller in his book, The

Assault on Privacy, examined the intrusion of computers and
data banks into personal lives over 25 years ago (Miller

1971) .
However, what is new today is the combination of

marketing expertise, in the form of research techniques and
media sophistication, and technological innovation
(computers and data banks are infinitely more capable than
when Miller wrote his book). The resulting nexus of

intrusion — desire to intrude, ability to intrude,
permission to intrude, incentive to intrude — has produced
a veritable explosion in segmentation related activities:
more research, more advertising, more media outlets, more
products, more identified and targeted segments. As these
processes proliferate the tendency to segment increases.
For example, marketing research activities (surveys, focus
groups, interviews) may encourage people to actually assign

themselves to segments (Maxwell 1996).
183
The sheer quantity and continuing growth of
segmentation activities warrant scrutiny; the increasing
sophistication and proficiencies of segmenters demand

analysis. Such was the genesis of this study.
Research Disciplines
The purpose of this study was twofold: first to
describe and understand the extent of segmentation
activities in the United States' consumer market; and two,

to compare and contrast the approaches to segmentation
embodied within the business and cultural industries

literature.
A review of the business literature leaves no doubt

that market segmentation is the central principle driving
business decisions in U.S. consumer markets today.

Moreover, as the practice of segmentation has evolved its
predominant application is as a positioning strategy; that
is, to take mass-produced, essentially generic products, and

through symbolic and referential appeals create the
impression of individualized, specifically targeted products
solving the needs/wants/desires of idiosyncratic niches.

These increasingly psychologically based appeals reverberate
with individuals and groups and ultimately serve not only to

commodify culture but to commodify the very self-image of
consumers.
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At the same time there is increasing emphasis on ever
more specific targeting activities, there is inertial
pressure toward the mass. Business, both manufacturing and

media entities, constantly yearn for larger and larger
markets/audiences as per the Fordist dictum, mass production
equals mass consumption. Thus, we have individuals striving

to express their individuality through the production and
consumption of mass produced, logoed goods, and media

fractionized into more output vehicles but all offering the
same cultural and socialization symbols, basically the same
programming formats, and quite often identical programs.
This inertia toward the mass reemphasizes the psychological

nature of modern segmentation; individuals grouped into
often created segments manipulated both by their desire to
belong and their desire to attain individualized (and

idealized) goals.
This is not to minimize the potentially adverse effects
endemic to segmentation's stratification of society.
Whether such segments are based on psychological or symbolic

terms, or whether they are based on more concrete,
demographic variables, the resultant stratified impacts are
ineluctable. Economically, there must be segments that are

more or less attractive and niching activities will tend to
isolate these segments to the detriment of the less
desirable groups. Other groups may be stigmatized or suffer

from the spotlight that segmentation places upon them.
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Recently, advertisers have begun to target the gay market
(Wilke 1997), but fully two-thirds of gay market advertisers
refuse to acknowledge or discuss such a targeting focus
(Advertising Age 1997c). This implicit disavowal suggests
that advertisers, while wanting to reap the economic
benefits of such targets, are fearful of a backlash from
other groups. Obviously, such a backlash might have adverse

effects not only for advertisers, but for the targeted group
as well.
Stratification has obvious implications for

differential information flow that will not only affect the
ability of individuals to interact and function within
society but will very likely retard democratic participation
(Baker 1994). As such, segmentation threatens individual

liberty and social equality.
Neither business or cultural industries research
approaches segmentation from an all-encompassing, universal,

primal perspective. For business, segmentation is a
strategy. Identified problems tend to be perceived as
strategically generated and strategically solved. For
example, invasion of privacy as a result of research
activities is unavoidable but should be minimized, which is

to say, such activities should be hidden when possible,
disguised when practicable and defended when necessary by
describing the benefits realized from such activities.
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Cultural industries generally has failed to consider
market segmentation as a strategic conceptualization.

Research in the field has identified many problems
associated with segmentation — advertising excess and
intrusion, invasion of privacy, media segmentation,
stratification of society, commodification, materialism,

etc. — but by and large these problems are discussed within
the context of capitalism, cultural artifacts ("consumer
culture," "commodification of culture"), information (the
promises of the so called "information age”) and technology
(both contributing to the above constructs and as a factor

in and of itself). But critical research as a whole fails
to ascribe the strategic impact of segmentation on these

areas of concern. Segmentation as a strategy has functioned
as a sort of sub-structure below the edifice that is
capitalism, to encourage, contribute to, and exacerbate many

of the problems identified by cultural analysts. As an
ethos, segmentation has permeated business thought and has,

therefore, affected not only strategy but structure (e.g.,
the media), form and content (advertising), production,
purchase and consumption. A failure to recognize this is to
underestimate the impact of segmentation activities and

corollaries on m o d e m society.
The mutual exclusiveness of the two disciplines just
described is problematic in terms of not only a meaningful

discussion of solutions to problems but the very definition
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of such problems. Business, with its overwhelmingly
administrative proclivity, is interested in maintaining the

status quo* which in this case means more — more segmented
media, more marketing research, more advertising and
promotion and more segments, begetting ever more. Cultural
industries' critical approach focuses on identifying

societal problems but fails to recognize the business
adherence to a segmentation preeminence. Thus never the
twain shall meet. So we see cultural industries concerned

about the environmental impacts of business and consumption
endeavors, while business views environmental problems as an
opportunity to position products; cultural industries sees
market research as an entity of stratification and social

management, business views research as a method to more
accurately describe segments and facilitate product
positioning; cultural industries expresses concern that
media fragmentation will contribute to the break-up of the
social fabric that holds us together as a society, business

sees media segmentation as a natural recognition of
individual differences that will ultimately result in

consumer emancipation.
Future Outlook
As long as business research remains administrative,
the likelihood of segmentation strategy substantively

changing seems minimal. As previously discussed, there is a
188
minority of business academics who have advocated the use of
more qualitative research approaches. Thus far such

qualitative programs have generally maintained an
administrative outlook. However, if as Smythe (1984)
implicitly asserts, critical research methods are conducive
to a critical perspective, then it is possible that ongoing

efforts may result in a more critical approach to business
research.
Cultural industries' attempts to shed light on the

problems related to market segmentation have been largely
ineffectual, at least in terms of impact on businesses and
business research approaches. Candidly, this is not
surprising and, ironically, is consistent with market

segmentation tenets. Business periodicals will naturally
have the mission of serving constituents, in this case

business academics and professionals, mostly interested in
furthering careers and business prospects. Readers of these
periodicals will, therefore, only be exposed to writing

espousing the merits of a pro-business environment and
expounding on the strategic advantages of segmentation.
Cultural industries research will not be published in
business periodicals, at least as it is currently framed and
targeted, and business readers will not tend to read the

publications where cultural industries research is
published, again because these publications are targeting a

different audience.
189
So what can cultural industries researchers do if they
wish to communicate and, consistent with Mosco's (1983)

third tenet of critical research, promote social
transformation?
1. Conduct research from the perspective of market
segmentation. Perhaps by grounding research efforts within

the context of segmentation strategy certain areas of
commonality with business research will arise, thus
facilitating communication.
2. Adopt the precepts of segmentation and target a

business audience. As business researchers embrace
qualitative research techniques it may be possible to
repackage critical research to deliver a message, but at the

same time remain palatable to a business audience.
3. Investigate interdisciplinary journal outlets. A
combination of business and cultural industries approaches

may attract a more widespread audience.
4. Engage in social advocacy. Similar to the
environmental movement, social protest may result in needed

reforms.
5. Legal reform. For example, the extent to which

business is free to pry into and manipulate personal data
unchecked is a suspect right. It makes little sense that
government is prohibited from delving into the personal

lives of citizens but multinational corporate leviathans can
intrude with impunity.
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6. Education. Academics have the wherewithal and duty
to open eyes and expand horizons. Present the arguments,
they speak for themselves.
Final Thoughts
In a sense this study has been an amphisbaenic
endeavor.1 Attempting to incorporate such disparate
research as business and cultural industries, not to mention
the diversity contained within the respective disciplines,
is indeed akin to wrestling with a two-headed serpent. In
the process I am sure I have glossed over certain aspects
and failed to attain an appropriate level of depth of
analysis in others. The approach of this research was to

critique the concept of market segmentation; hopefully
future research will address specific issues relating to
segmentation, grounding such efforts within the framework of
segmentation strategy. Such future research efforts could

include, but are not limited to, the following examples.
One such project would be a systematic examination of

ads from one company or companies placed in various media
purporting to target different segments. Such an analysis
would help assess the extent to which marketers devise
specific messages to appeal to various segments as versus

using media to segment audiences.
Research the attitudes and opinions of professionals
within the fields of marketing and advertising. Ascertain

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how such professionals approach segmentation activities and
why they choose among the various methods, strategies, and

applications available. Discuss the types of issues raised
by cultural industries and elicit professionals' reactions
to these "problems."
Conduct audience research, specifically analyzing how

"targets" react to being targeted. Do audience/consumers
find targeting activities and segmentation effects to be

beneficial, harmful, inconsequential?
Investigate businesses and their approach to
segmentation. For example, identify those business who
subscribe to segmentation systems such as those described in

Chapter III; how do they utilize the resources of such
programs, do they find such systems useful, how do they
apply the broad-based information provided to their

individual business circumstance?
Track the increased conglomeration of media and assess
the reactions of individual media outlets to conglomerate

control. Is there more of a tendency to segment or less?
Delve into the whole area of political speech. Do
democratic institutions suffer or benefit from increased

segmentation activities?
Track the proclivities of business research. Test

Smythe's (1984) tenet that approach follows method by
observing whether business researchers embrace more and more

qualitative research approaches and if, in so doing, the
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outlook of business research takes on more of a critical
perspective.
Two final comments. First, this research has attempted

to track and assess current trends in market segmentation.
One conclusion is that currently, the predominant
segmentation strategy is to position products rather than
attempting to differentiate among product characteristics.

Or, to approach the term segment as a verb, not as a noun.
This does not imply, implicitly or otherwise, that marketers
never use the term segment as a noun, never observe segments
and modify or create productsto caterto those observed

segments. Of course they do.The point is not that such
activities never take place, but rather that an exhaustive

review of the literature indicates that the emphasis on such
differentiation approaches is lessening, and as positioning

strategies become dominant a whole set of problems arise.
Also, the whole issue ofaudienceempowerment is not

discounted by this research study. Certainly, audiences and
consumers are not automatons dancing to the strings of
marketing puppeteers. Obviously audiences/consumers belong
to identifiable segments and they often choose to belong to
such segments. Any cause-effect relationship is necessarily

difficult to determine within the cultural realm. Reducing
such complex interactions to an individual message-receiver,
cause and effect level borders on the absurd (Did exposure

to a specific ad message contribute to the commodification
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of culture?). Of great interest, however, is not so much
whether it can be proved that marketers succeed in their

attempts to guide or manipulate consumers; but in what ways
can we observe that they attempted to do just that.
Finally, upon reflection, it may seem that a
disproportionate amount of criticism has been heaped upon

advertising. The focus on advertising was not predetermined
but has been the natural result of the examination of
segmentation; that is, as segmentation has evolved it has
increasingly emphasized positioning over differentiation.

Where positioning strategy is preeminent, advertising and
promotion will take on added importance. Advertising no
longer is a method of announcement but has become a vehicle
of persuasion. As such it merits attention.
This is not to suggest that advertising is evil and, as

has been repeatedly emphasized, it is driven in its
applications by the imperatives of segmentation strategy.
But this does not mean that advertising should not attempt
to minimize harm. When advertising, of all cultural

systems, becomes a primary (dominant?) way of knowing and
experiencing, when the suspension of disbelief shifts from
willing to unwitting, then the institution of advertising

shoulders a responsibility that should not be shirked. At a
minimum advertising should not target and appeal to
vulnerable consumers (Schudson 1984), e.g., children,

marginal and peripheral persons (whether in the first,
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second, third or fourth worlds), and competent consumers

under duress. Only the most sang-froid among us would
suggest that the advertising status quo is acceptable.
Which brings us back to where we began this chapter,

visiting Calvin and Hobbes.
Calvin, "Another thing to remember about popular

culture is that today's TV-reared audience is hip and
sophisticated. This stuff doesn't affect us. We can
separate fact from fiction. We understand satire and
irony. We're detached and jaded viewers who aren't
influenced by what we watch.”
Hobbes, "I think I hear advertisers laughing."

Calvin, "Hold on, I need to inflate my basketball
shoes."
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APPENDIX A
PRIZM GEODEMOGRAPHIC CLUSTERS
1. Blue Blood Estates:

America's wealthiest neighborhoods, populated by high
level business executives, professionals and heirs to "old
money," accustomed to privilege and living in luxurious
surroundings. Neighborhoods include suburban homes and one
in ten millionaires. Represents 1.1 percent of U.S.
households.
2. Money 6 Brains:
Have the nation's second highest socioeconomic rank.
Posh big-city enclaves of townhouses, condos and apartments.
This group has relatively few children and is dominated by
childless couples and a mix of upscale singles. They are
sophisticated consumers of adult luxuries — apparel,
restaurants, travel, etc. Represents 0.9 percent of U.S.
households.
3. Furs & Station Wagons:
Typified by "new money," living in metropolitan bedroom
suburbs. These sure well educated, mobile professionals and
managers with the nation's highest incidence of teenage
children. They are winners — big producers and big
spenders. Represent 3.2 percent of U.S. households.
4. Urban Gold Coast:
Upscale urban high-rise districts. It is the most
densely populated per square mile, with the highest
concentration of one-person households in multi-unit, high-
rise buildings, and the lowest incidence of auto ownership,
other mosts: most white collar, most childless, and most New
York. Represents 0.5 percent of U.S. households.
5. Pools & Patios:
Older, upper-middle-class, suburban communities. Once
resembled Furs & Station Wagons but today most of the
children have grown and gone, leaving aging couples in empty
nests too costly for young homemakers. Good educations,
high white-collar employment levels, and double incomes
assure "the good life" in these neighborhoods. Represent
3.4 percent of U.S. households.
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6. Two More Rungs:

Has a high concentration of foreign-born European
ethnics and is somewhat older, with even fewer children. It
is also more dense, with a higher incidence of renters in
multiple-unit, high-rise housing, and has a northeastern
geo-center. Two More Rungs neighborhoods show a high index
for professionals, and somewhat conservative spending
patterns. Represents 0.7 percent of U.S. households.
7. Young Influentials:
Yuppies. Young, metropolitan sophisticates, with
exceptional high-tech, white collar employment levels.
Double incomes afford high spending and lifestyles are open
with singles, childless couples, and unrelated adults
predominating in expensive one- and two-person homes,
apartments, and condos. They are skewed to the new West.
8. Young Suburbia:
One of the largest clusters, found coast to coast in
most major markets. Tends toward large, young families and
ranks second in incidence of married couples with children.
These neighborhoods are distinguished by their relative
affluence and high white-collar employment levels. Strong
consumers of most family products. Represents 5.3 percent
of U.S. households.
9. God's Country:
Upscale frontier boomtowns. Contains the highest
socioeconomic, white collar neighborhoods primarily located
outside major metros. These are well-educated frontier
types, who have opted to live away from the big metros in
some of our most beautiful mountain and coastal areas. They
are highly mobile, and are among the nation's fastest
growing neighborhoods. Outstanding consumer of both
products and media. Represents 2.7 percent of U.S.
households.
10. Blue-Chip Blues:

The wealthiest blue collar suburbs. Ranks fourth in
married couples with children, similar to Young Suburbia on
most dimensions except social rank. Its predominant high
school educations and blue collar occupations are reflected
in fewer high-end incomes and lower home values. However,
high employment and double incomes yield similar
discretionary spending patterns and make this cluster an
outstanding market. Represents six percent of U.S.
households.
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11. Bohemian Mix:

Inner-city bohemian enclaves a la Greenwich Village.
Integrated, singles-dominated, high-rise hodge-podge of
white collars, students, divorced persons, actors, writers,
artists, aging hippies and races. Represents 1.1 percent of
U.S. households.
12. Levittown, U.S.A.:

Aging, World War II tract subdivisions. The children
are largely grown and gone. Aging couples remain
comfortable, middle class, suburban homes. Employment
levels are still high, including double incomes and living
is comfortable. Represents 3.1 percent of U.S. households.
13. Gray Power:

Upper-middle-class retirement communities. Represents
nearly two million senior citizens. Primarily concentrated
in sunbelt communities of the South Atlantic and Pacific
regions, these are the nation's most affluent elderly,
retired, and widowed neighborhoods with the highest
concentration of childless married couples, living in mixed
multi-units, condos, and mobile homes on nonsalaried
incomes. Represents 2.9 percent of U.S. households.
14. Black Enterprise:
Neighborhoods are nearly 70 percent black, with median
black household incomes well above average and with
consumption behavior to match. A few downscale pockets can
be found, but the majority of blacks in these neighborhoods
are educated, employed, and solidly set in the upper middle
class. Represents 0.8 percent of U.S. households.
15. New Beginnings:

Fringe-city areas of singles complexes, garden
apartments and trim bungalows. Is represented in nearly all
markets but shows its strongest concentrations in the West.
It provides new homes to many victims of the divorce boom in
search of new job opportunities and lifestyles. The
predominant age is 18-34 and the mode is pre-child with
employment concentrated in lower level white collar and
clerical occupations. Represents 4.3 percent of U.S.
households.
16. Blue-Collar Nursery:

Middle class, child rearing towns. Leads the nation in
craftsmen, the elite of the blue collar world. Number one
in married couples with children and households of three or
more. These are low-density satellite towns and suburbs of
smaller industrial cities. They are well paid and very
stable. Represents 2.2 percent of U.S. households.
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17. New Homesteaders:

Cluster resembles God's Country in its mobility,
housing, and family characteristics. The big difference is
that these neighborhoods are nine rungs down on the
socioeconomic scale, with all measures of education and
affluence being significantly lower. It shows peak
concentrations of military personnel and has a strong
Western skew. It is one of the largest and fastest growing
clusters. Represents 4.2 percent of U.S. households.
18. New Melting Pot:
New immigrant neighborhoods, primarily in the nation's
port cities. Predominantly Hispanic, Asian and Middle-
Eastern origins. Represents 0.9 percent of U.S. households.
19. Towns 6 Gowns:
America's college towns. The population is three
quarters local ("towns") to one quarter students ("gowns"),
giving this cluster its name and unique profile. It shows
extreme concentrations of age 18-24 singles and students in
group quarters, very high educational, professional, and
technical levels, and a taste for prestige products in
contrast with modest income and home values. Represents 1.2
20. Rank 6 File:
Older, blue collar, industrial suburbs. Similar to
Levittown but five rungs down on the socioeconomic scale.
This cluster contains many traditional, blue collar family
neighborhoods where children have grown and departed,
leaving an aging population. Rank 8 File shows high
concentrations of protective-service and blue collar workers
living in aged duplex rows and multi-unit "railroad" flats.
It leads the nation in durable manufacturing. Represents
21. Middle America:
Composed of mid-sized, middle class satellite suburbs
and towns. It is at the center of the socioeconomic scale
and is close to the U.S. average on most measures of age,
ethnicity, household composition and life cycle. It is also
centered in the Great Lakes industrial region, near the
population geo-center of the United States. Represents 3.2
22. Old Yankee Rows:
Matches the New Melting Pot in age, housing mix, family
composition, and income. However, it has a high
concentration of high school educated Catholics of European
origin with very few minorities. These are well paid, mixed
blue/white collar areas, geo-centered in the older
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industrial cities of the Northeast. Represents 1.6 percent

of U.S. households.
23. Coalburg 6 Corntown:

Snail towns based on light industry and fanning
populated by solid, blue collar citizens raising sturdy, Tom
Sawyer-ish children in decent, front-porch houses.
Represents two percent of U.S. households.
24. Shotguns & Pickups:

Aggregates hundreds of small, outlying townships and
crossroad villages which serve the nation's breadbasket and
other rural areas. It has a more easterly distribution and
shows peak indices for large families with school-age
children headed by blue collar craftsmen, equipment
operators and transport workers with high school educations.
These areas are home to many dedicated outdoorsmen.
25. Golden Ponds:

Rustic cottage communities located near the coasts, in
the mountains or alongside lakes. Predominantly seniors who
choose to retire amongst country neighbors. While not as
affluent nor as elderly as Gray Power, Golden Ponds ranks
high on all measures of retirement. Represents 5.2 percent
of U.S. households.
26. Agri-Business:
Small towns surrounded by large-scale farms and
ranches. Geo-centered in the Great Plains and mountain
states. In good part prosperous but picture is marred by
rural poverty where weather-worn old men and a continuing
youth exodus testify to hard living. Represents 2.1 percent
of U.S. households.
27. Emergent Minorities:

Almost 80 percent black, the remainder largely
Hispanics and other minorities. Shows above average
concentrations for children, almost half of them with single
parents. It also shows below average levels of education
and white collar employment. Working class, city
neighborhoods struggling to emerge from poverty. Represents
28. Single City Blues:
Represents the nation's densely urban, downscale single
areas. Many are located near city colleges and the cluster
displays a bimodal education profile. With very few
children and its odd mixture of races, classes, transients,
and night trades, Single City Blues could be aptly described
as the poor man's Bohemia. Represents 3.3 percent of U.S.
households.
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29. Mines 6 Mills:

Struggling steeltowns and mining villages scattered
throughout the Appalachian mountains, from Hew England to
the Pennsylvania-Ohio industrial complex to points south.
It ranks first in total manufacturing and blue collar
occupations. Represents 2.8 percent of U.S. households.
30. Back-Country Folks:
Remote, downscale rural towns, geo-centered in the
02ark and Appalachian uplands. It is strongly blue collar,
with some farmers, and leads all clusters in concentration
of mobile homes and trailers. Represents 3.4 percent of
U.S. households.
31. Norma Rae-ville:

Lower-middle-class milltowns and industrial suburbs,
primarily located in the South with its geo-center in the
Appalachian and Piedmont regions. They are country folk
with minimal educations, a high index for blacks, and lead
the nation in nondurable manufacturing. Represents 2.3
32. smalltown Downtown:

Inner-city districts of small industrial cities.
Working class row-house neighborhoods. Represents 2.5
33. Grain Belt:

A close match to Agri-Business on most demographic
measures. However, these areas show a far higher
concentration of working farm owners and less affluent
tenant farmers. Tightly geo-centered in the Great Plains
and mountain states, these are the nation's most stable and
sparsely populated rural communities. Represents 1.3
34. Heavy Industry:
Lower-working-class districts in the nation's older
industrial cities. Hit hard by unemployment, very Catholic,
with above average incidence of Hispanics. These
neighborhoods have deteriorated rapidly during the past
decade and a half. There are fewer children, and many
broken homes. Represents 2.8 percent of U.S. households.
35. Share Croppers:
Represented in 48 states but is deeply rooted in the
heart of Dixie. Traditionally, these areas were devoted to
such industries as tenant farming, chicken breeding,
pulpwood, and paper milling, etc. But sunbelt migration and
a ready labor pool have continued to attract light industry
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and some population growth. Represents 4 percent of U.S

households.
36. Downtown Dixie Style:

Middle-density urban neighborhoods with a southern geo
center, nearly 70 percent black and fall between Emergent
Minorities and Public Assistance in relative affluence.
Unemployment is high, with service occupations dominating
amongst the employed. Represents 3.4 percent of U.S.
households.
37. Hispanic Mix:

The nation's Hispanic barrios. Chiefly concentrated in
the Mid-Atlantic and West. These neighborhoods feature
dense, row-house areas containing large families with small
children, many headed by solo parents. They rank second in
percentage of foreign b o m , first in short-term immigration,
and are essentially bilingual neighborhoods. Represents 1.9
38. Tobacco Roads:
Predominantly black farm communities throughout the
South. These areas are above average for children of all
ages, nearly a third in single-parent households. Dependent
upon agriculture, Tobacco Roads ranks at the bottom in white
collar occupations. Represents 1.2 percent of U.S.
households.
39. Hard Scrabble:

These neighborhoods represent our poorest rural areas,
from Appalachia to the Ozarks, Mexican border country, and
the Dakota Bad Lands. Hard Scrabble leads all other
clusters in concentration of adults with less than eight
years of education and trails all other clusters in
concentration of working women. Represents 1.5 percent of
U.S. households.
40. Public Assistance:
America's inner-city ghettos. These are the nation's
poorest neighborhoods, 70 percent black. These areas have
been urban-renewal targets for three decades and show large,
solo-parent families in rented or public high-rise buildings
interspersed with aging tenement rows. Represents 3.1
(Source of all cluster descriptions: Claritas Corp. as

reported in Weiss 1988; and Hawkins, Best and Coney 1989.
Household percentages are based on 1987 census block groups
and estimated to the closest 0.1 percent.)
202
APPENDIX B
ARTICLES CONSULTED
Jaurnal of-Marketing
Dates: January 1992 through April 1997
Issues: 22
Articles: 161
Journal of Consumer Research
Dates: March 1992 through June 1997
Issues: 22
Articles: 227
Advertising Ago
Dates: January 6, 1992 through June 30, 1997
Articles: 16,566
Business Periodicals Index

Dates: August 1992 through June 1997
Journals indexed: Approximately 400
Search topics: Market segmentation; micro marketing;
niche marketing; positioning; regional marketing;
target marketing.
Articles: 675
ABI/Inform
Dates: 1987 through 1996
Journals indexed: Approximately 1,000
Search topics - articles:
Market segmentation 3,414
Target markets - 18,838
Niche marketing 4,420
1 .
203
ENDNOTES
Chapter II: A Brief Overview of Segmentation In the

Twentieth Century
1. For a discussion of these factors and others that have
certainly contributed to an environment conducive to
segmented markets, see Boorstin 1973; Fraser 1981; Goodrum
and Dalrymple 1990; Hayes 1941; Marchand 1985; Norris 1990;
Pope 1983; Seldin 1963; find Strasser 1989.
Chapter IV: Market Segmentation: Societal Effects
1. In fact, immediately after being cut from the network

schedule "Hee Haw" was picked up in syndication and
continued to be successful with first-run programs; all
three other programs were picked up as reruns and have
continued to appear in the rerun market.
2. The special center section devoted to green marketing was
printed on recycled paper; the cover page contained both the
chasing arrow symbol and the words, "Section printed on
recycled paper.” The fact that the publishers chose a
conscious strategy of utilizing recycled paper only for the
section devoted to a discussion of environmental marketing
is elucidative. The decision is representative of
segmenter's efforts to position their products as green,
rather than any commitment to environmentalism.
Chapter V: Research on Market Segmentation: Trends and

Conflicts
1. See Michael Real (1986) for an overview of critical
approaches in which he argues that critical research has
developed its own focus, agenda, style and identity and as
such, no longer warrants being defined in a derivative
manner.
204
2. For examples of research utilizing more qualitative or

humanistic methods as well as articles discussing the
appropriateness of such methods see, e.g., Anderson 1988;
Belk 1985, 1987, 1988; Belk and Pollay 1985; Belk, Sherry
and Wallendorf 1988; Calder and Tybout 1987; Freidman 1985;
Hirschman 1985, 1988; Holbrook 1987; Holbrook, chestnut,
Oliva and Greenleaf 1984; Hudson and 02anne 1988; McCracken
1986; Mick 1986; Sherry and Camargo 1987; Wallendorf and
Arnould 1988.
Chapter VI: Conclusion
1. Amphisbaena as defined by The American Heritage

Dictionary: A mythological serpent having a head at each end
of its body. Latin from Greek amphisbaina, "one that goes
in both directions" : amphi-, on both sides + Jbainein, to
go.
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300 North Zeeb Road

Markets," a dissertation prepared by Mark R. Phillips, Jr.

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of

Dr. Ji et Wasko, Chair of the Examining Committee

Committee in charge: Dr. Janet Wasko, Chair

and Dean of the Graduate School

Mark R. Phillips, Jr. for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Title: A THEORETICAL CRITIQUE OP SEGMENTATION

As the practice of market segmentation becomes more

entrenched, pervasive and sophisticated it is incumbent on

researchers in disparate fields — political economy,

cultural studies, media criticism, marketing, business and

advertising — to more carefully examine segmenting, or

niching, consumer markets.

The purpose of this study is to examine the promises,

polices and practices of segmentation and to ascertain what

drives it and what ramifications we can observe and

The goal of this research is explicated in four basic

ways: first, an overview of the evolution of segmentation;

second, a scrutiny of three segmentation system exemplars;

periodicals from the aforementioned disciplines.

principally as a marketing endeavor facilitating company/

much identified as manufactured/ thus elevating advertising

in prominence. The ramifications of such practices are

varied, but most prominent is the fragmentation of both

Finally, to compare issues of import among disciplines

concerned with segmentation, a leading trade journal in

advertising, and academic periodicals from marketing and

consumer behavior were perused for the last five years

totaling over 16,000 articles. In addition various

databases were searched and the resulting titles and

abstracts numbering over 25,000 were scanned. Remarkably,

not a single article or abstract criticized or questioned

the policy of segmentation. In the fields of social and

exclusiveness suggests a level of insulation around

marketing and advertising practitioners that will tend to

guarantee maintenance of the segmentation status quo.

NAME OF AUTHOR: Mark R. Phillips, Jr.

PLACE OF BIRTH: Jacksonville, Florida

GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:

Doctor of Philosophy in Speech, 1997, University of

AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:

Teaching Assistant, Marketing, University of Oregon,

Teaching Assistant, Department of Speech, University of

Teaching Assistant, Journalism and Communication,

1993-94 Starlin Award - Outstanding Graduate Student in

Wasko, Janet, and Mark Phillips. 1993 "The Business of

The author expresses gratitude to Dr. Janet Wasko for

her forbearance, knowledge, insight, and unfailing goodwill.

The members of my committee — Dr. Charles Frazer, Dr.

Daniel Pope, and Dr. Ronald Sherriffs — have provided

valuable direction both before and during the process of

writing this manuscript. I am sincerely appreciative.

If patience is a virtue, then these scholars are truly

Forever and ever and twelve days.

II. A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF SEGMENTATION INTHE