Marketing segmentation, with its focus on increasing market share, inevitable leads back to mass marketing. In the words of William T. Moran:
"American businessmen have been never really willing to buy into the economic premise of market segmentation. Every time a segmented-appeal product or positioning-concept is tested--no matter how intensely it is preferred by some segment--someone sets about to modify it so that it will appeal to a larger group in order to increase its potential market share. Pretty soon, every brand is trying to appeal to every other brand's customers." [1]
For now, segmentation is just a necessary evil for niche (or at least "non-mass") marketers who lack the resources and the conceptual framework for one-to-one marketing.
[1] Brand Presence and Perceptional Frame, by William T. Moran, Greenwich, CT (Longman, Moran Analytics, 1987).
