Is market segmentation really discrimination? That’s the debate on the Advertising Age website today. Apparently arising from an assignment to a group of college students. There are a couple lengthy discussions posted so far.
Anyway, I like to say that market researchers get paid to stereo type. If you want to take it one step further and call it discrimination so be it. Stereotyping/discriminating based on statistics. I have no problems with that 
We’re quite a ways off from 1-1 segmentation.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Jared // Mar 23, 2009 at 1:40 am
Generally not but I know a few that are, that wouldn’t make be discriminate against all researchers though.
2 J. Jack Andrade // Mar 25, 2009 at 7:21 am
Regarding the strong language used to initiate this discussion, it could be viewed as inflammatory, as well. When you use terms like Bigots, Discrinimatory and Stereotyping in the same sentence/question it’s biased at best, specious at worse.
But regarding the issue: do we have a monoculture in the US? No. Do we need to segment the target population(s) based on culture and point of reference? Of course. The questions used and the analysis by the researcher is always an extension of the person/client’s view of the target population.
If research is conducted using a purely empirical intent, there are advisories, secondary research and methods to account for cultural segmentation. If prior research assumptions used are discriminatory, then it will be biased that way. I’ll leave it to those more intelligent (or conspiratorial) than me to tear apart the hidden psychological themes of why.
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