What is market segmentation? List the steps in the market segmentation process.

Market segmentation is the method of separating a potential consumer market into categories, or divisions, based on different characteristics. The segments produced are made up of customers who will respond to marketing campaigns in a similar way and who share traits such as common preferences, needs or locations. Market segmentation allows marketers to personalize their marketing campaigns more easily. By arranging the target market for their company into segmented groups, instead of targeting each potential customer individually, marketers can be more efficient with their time, money , and other resources than if they were targeting individual consumers. The grouping together of similar consumers enables marketers to target specific audiences cost-effectively. Market segmentation often decreases the risk of an ineffectual or ineffective marketing campaign. If marketers divide a market based on key features and tailor their campaigns based on that detail, the chances of success are far better than if they were to build a standardized strategy and seek to execute it across all segments. Marketers may also prioritize our segmentation to their target markets. When segmentation shows that some buyers are more likely to buy a product than others, advertisers may assign their interest and resources more effectively.

Steps in the Market Segmentation Process

1. Determine the Need of the Segment - Customer needs, and how you can organize customers according to their needs. That is in terms of consumer use, or what each consumer would like to have.
2. Identifying the Segment - When you know the customers need, you will decide who will be the customers to select your product over other offers. In this case, you need to decide which type of segmentation you will be using. If it is regional, ethnic, psychographic or so on, you have to differentiate the people from inside the crowd.
3. Choosing the Most Attractive Segment - The targeting process in market segmentation measures. You have to choose which segment is the most attractive to you from the different segments you have defined through demography, geography, or psychography. The Company's attractiveness also depends on the segment's competition. When there is too much rivalry in a given segment then it makes no sense to take that segment into account. That section isn't really attractive at all.
4. Identifying if the Segment is Giving Profit - A decision to be made if which of those segments is most competitive.This is also yet another targeting move in the segmentation process. 
5. Positioning the Segment - If you have established the most lucrative segments through market segmentation measures, then you need to place your product in consumers ' minds. The basic idea is that the organization has to add value to its goods.
6. Expanding the Segment - This needs to be applicable to all segments. So, if you've identified a segment, the segment should be such that the organization will grow with the form of segmentation selected. If the market is really narrow then in due time the company will run out of its path. Hence the segment 's expansion is the second last step in segmenting the market.
7. Incorporating the Segmentation Into the Marketing Strategy - Once you've found a profitable and expandable segment, you'll need to incorporate that segment into your marketing strategy. With market segmentation steps, the segments become transparent and you can then adjust other marketing campaign variables according to the segment that is being targeted. You can adjust the goods, retain the optimum price, increase the distribution and the location, and eventually promote the target market simply and crisply. Business is becoming simpler due to the market segmentation process.