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Evolution of key terms in marketing
Edited by Ben Wooliscroft
Introduction
In this paper I want to deal with the evolution of segmentation over a century, from 1800 to 1928, using the German book trade as a case example. The paper shows how segmentation was first developed by marketing practitioners, who over the course of the nineteenth century made use of increasingly greater and more sophisticated segmentation practices to grow their markets. When formal thought began to develop in the early twentieth century; it was based heavily upon marketing practice. Before there was marketing thought about segmentation, there was marketing practice. Careful observation of practice eventually led some to generalize from it, then fitting it to conceptual frameworks from organized academic disciplines, thus beginning to articulate marketing thought. The publication of the publisher Horst Kliemann's discussion of segmentation in 1928 culminated the transition from practice to thought. It appeared almost thirty years before [18] Smith's (1956) classic articulation in the US - but after more than a century of practice.
Segmentation is a major element of marketing thought today. Of course there are differing definitions of segmentation (see, for example, [12] Hunt, 2011); mine is practical: that segmentation is the subdivision of the overall market based on buyer preferences. A firm develops these subdivisions only in order to expand the market. The process begins with the awareness that different groups (segments) of buyers hold differing preferences for the same basic product. Developing variations of a product will appeal to different groups of people. Thus there is a group of people who want a simple cellphone to send and receive calls and SMS messages, a group wanting a more sophisticated phone with a camera, a group wanting a jewelry-embellished luxury phone, and a group wanting a smartphone enabling them to surf the internet, play complex games, check movie reviews, etc. All of these preference markets are presently operating. The same logic applies to many product businesses, including bookselling. After all, how many of you would want to read a "bodice-ripper" set in eighteenth century France? How many would want to read a picture book about exotic luxury cars that practically no one can afford? How many want to read a Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook? Yet there...