李鎔燦(서강대학교 경영대학원 마아케팅 전공)
ABSTRACT
A Study on the Toothpaste Market Segmentation by Benefit
Yong Chan Lee(Sogang University Graduate School of Business Administration)
Today's companies are doing business activities based on marketing concept centered on meeting consumers' various wants and needs, and one of the strategies to achieve marketing success is market segmentation. Markets consist of buyers who differ in wants, resources, tastes, buying practices and buying attitudes. Market segmentation helps the firm divide the market into several distinct groups of consumers with homogeneous needs.
In pursuing the market segmentation, the most important factor is choosing the most appropriate criteria to segment the market. Most commonly used criteria are geographic, demographic, psychographic, consumer purchasing behavior variables, which have certain significant advantages and disadvantages, respectively. The numerous sets of variables, such as geographic, demographic, psychographic, purchase behavior, that have been used traditionally to identify segments may or may not lead to accurate conclusions about market segments, depending on the particular characteristics of respective market.
Market segmentation by benefit enables the marketer to collect more useful informations in evaluating and selecting target market and product positioning since it is segmentation by causal factors, where as the traditional approaches are segmentation by descriptive factors. It can also be used to predict responses to advertising copy. This study, using R. I. Haley's earlier benefit segmentation research as a base, who is the originator of benefit segmentation, is designed to ascertain the applicability of benefit segmentation to local toothpaste market, using the following basic research design.
1. Local toothpaste market was chosen as the object product to find how various benefits and product attributes of toothpaste are expected by local consumers.
2. A total of 599 female respondents were asked to indicate likes and dislikes of the toothpaste they are using, which will provide marketers with new market opportunities.
3. Markets were segmented by asking respondents to indicate the degree of the importance for the pre-selected thirteen product attributes and to evaluate the local toothpaste brands by the perceived product attributes.
4. Toothpaste market, segmented according to the product attribute, was compared with demographic variables.
The research findings are;

1. Local toothpaste consumers consist of two large groups, seeking economy and refreshed feeling, respectively, even though the ultimate purpose of using toothpaste is anti-cavities in the long term and refreshed feeling in the short term.
2. Consumers are worried about cavity, followed by gum disease and foul scent.
3. Blendax and Perioe Doctor are toothpastes of highest rating in meeting various benefits sought by consumers. Blendax has good reputation in the benefit segment of anti-cavities and refreshment. Blendax needs to review its premium pricing policy to be more competitive in price and to increase its market share.
4. Perioe Doctor currently enjoys good preference in the benefit segment of prevention of gum disease and removal of foul breath. In review of its highest rating in overall benefit segments, it needs to launch its large-scaled advertising.
5. Lucky is positioned and has maintained brand loyalty for more than 20years for low price product. Other than economy, it does not appeal to any particular benefit segment. It needs to try to find a benefit segment at which to aim concretely.
It may be concluded that the benefit segment is the most appropriate market segmentation approach in segmenting toothpaste market effectively, though further research such as psychographic segmentation should be conducted in parallel with benefit segmentation to validate the more accurate segmentation of toothpaste market.