The New Labels

Marketing practice forces us to create labels; to classify people into what we commonly call "segments." Segments have been defined either demographically (population, households, age, income, marital status, occupation, housing, etc.)  or psychographically (lifestyle to include shopping habits, travel and vacations, car purchases, financial investments, leisure activities, etc.)

Sometimes we get creative and come up with a "value analysis" that takes all this data, mixes it into a computer and out comes 10 or 12 neat categories that describes and labels all the people in your market and provides key characteristics of each group.  There are several firms that will do this analysis for you. None will tell you how these segments buy your product. None are really worth the money.

We don't need more analysis. What we need is to look at our market, our customers and potential customers in a new way.


We need to look at them in a way that labels them by HOW they USE our product.  If we understand how our customers use and consume our product we can provide them with the personalized benefits they want for the specific product they want.

So here's what I propose we "label" our customers:

1. "The Stars" - Customers who like to bowl and have the time and money to bowl in a traditional 36 week. 
2. "The Rising Stars" - Customers who like to bowl and have the time and money to bowl ONLY in leagues that are 16 weeks or less.
3. "The New Traditionalists" - Customers who like to bowl and have some time and less money and would only bowl in a program of 8 weeks or less.
4. "The Family" - Whether its a single family household, dual income household or single earner household, these people bowl mostly on Saturday and Sundays, mostly when weather is cold, rainy or light snow.  May bowl in your family cosmic bowling program.
5. The Discounter"  Likes to bowl infrequently, maybe 2 to 3 times a year and will ONLY bowl when there is a deal at the time he or she wants to bowl.
6. "The Hipster" - Bowls only when there is music and light shows.  Usually on Friday and Saturday night late night, usually after 10pm.
7. "The Birthday Bowler" - Only bowls when invited to a birthday party, either a child, a teen or an adult.
8.  "The Company Man" - Only bowls when invited to a company or group outing. Maybe bowls with his kid at a family outing

Now the real question is: "Do you have  a marketing plan to attract and retain these "labels".  Because if you don't then you can label all of them "non bowlers".