Who Am I, or Pro-Am I?: Developing a Practice-Based Segmentation Model

Abstract

Abstract: Segmentation has been a dominant tool of traditional marketing theory to understand consumer behavior. However, contemporary segmentation models are highly focused on the individual consumer and who they are in terms of demographics, psychographics and behavior, instead of what they do. Accordingly, this research aims to conceptualize segmentation from a practice-theoretical lens by moving the focus to how and why activities are carried out by individuals. Through an ethnographic study, generating empirical material from interviews and observations, we explore and illustrate how a segmentation model, i.e. the Practice Portfolio, can be empirically developed. Having music production as the exemplifying social practice, we examine the opportunities of segmenting markets after the embodied elements of practices; understandings and teleoaffective structures. Our findings demonstrate how understandings of a social practice range from a low to a high degree, i.e. from an Amateur (Am) level to a Professional (Pro) level. Combined with the teleoaffective structure, varying from being self-oriented (Am) to commercially oriented (Pro), four possible combinations, thus segments, emerge; the Pro, the Am, the Pro-Am and the Am-Pro. These four generalizations of segments and sub-practices within social practices result in the Practice Portfolio.