CIMCIG – Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Construction Industry Group

Segmentation allows you to group together customers with similar characteristics or requirements so that you can develop a targeted and focus approach. Chris Ashworth explains how to use this approach to promote sustainability.

Segmentation is a core principal in marketing, it’s the process of defining your markets and allows the business to accurately measure its share of the market, how it is changing as well as identifying target customers and influencers. In the construction industry we tend to use the segments defined by government statistics; Public and Private Residential, Public Non-residential, Private Industrial, Private Commercial and Infrastructure. These are not always right for today’s markets and forecasting organisations like the CPA split the market further with segments including Health, Education, Offices and Retail.

These are nice functional segments, with individual characteristics which allow us to focus expertise and tailor offerings. But as sustainability becomes a core issue there is the opportunity to subdivide these sectors into niche segments to reflect attitudes to, and potential for, sustainable products and services.

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