The approach is as follows. The current convention in the UK is to use a mixture of social class and income. Classifications are based on the occupation of the head of household. Despite criticisms of this classification for being inadequate to describe consumer groups recent research has emphasised that it still maintains its discriminating power. This approach to segmentation combines a number of variables such as where a customer lives, with home ownership, size of family, and so on.
Different people buy the same or similar products for different reasons.
For instance some people will visit a restaurant because it has a reputation for good food or drink and therefore seek gastronomic experience, others may visit the same restaurant to derive social benefits or status. Behavioural segmentation identifies consumption rates of a product or service as a means of segmenting markets. Loyalty status . A market can also be segmented according to the degree of consumer loyalty to a product or service brand. A brewery may identify the pubs in a post code area for instance pub A, pub B, pub C, pub D and classify the local population according to their loyalty.