Konsumtionsstammar - från teori till praktik : En kvalitativ studie om företags segmenteringsstrategier

Sammanfattning: Segmentation has long been used by companies as the main strategy to succeed in the marketplace. This method is mainly about dividing the marketplace into smaller segments, where individuals are divided according to predefined variables. These variables are based on the solid social positions of individuals, of a modern society and have been questioned by researchers who believe that this method should be reviewed. The reason is that the modern society is considered to have been replaced by the postmodern society, which is dynamic and fragmented, in which these variables are considered irrelevant. It is from this perspective that the term "Consumer tribes" was chosen to be studied in more detail in this paper. As a starting point, Bernard Cova's theory of the social link, has been used. The purpose of the study was to find out to what extent the idea of consumer tribes are present in practice. In order to investigate this, segmentation was chosen as a point of view inthe study. To carry out the survey, a deductive research effort was adopted with a qualitative method. The data has been generated from ten qualitative semi structured interviews that have been held with people who work in the subject area. The study's results show that the majority of companies are familiar with the concept of consumer tribes. Although most companies do not use the concept in those terms, the result shows that the idea is used by the companies in other terms. However, the traditional segmentation variables are most common among the companies in the survey, although someof the postmodern reasoning can be found in the result. Furthermore, it is noted that the most common way for companies to try to position themselves in the chosen customer segments is through different types of opinion shapers.