SEGMENT: Applicability of an Existing Segmentation Technique to TDM Social Marketing Campaigns in the United States

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Social marketing seeks to develop and integrate marketing concepts with other approaches to influence behaviors that benefit individuals and communities for the greater social good (International Social Marketing Association, 2013). Social marketing is a useful transportation demand management (TDM) planning approach to promote travel behavior change, and integrates several distinguishing features which set it apart from other popular behavior change planning approaches, such as education and mass media campaigns. These features include a focus on socially beneficial behavior change, a strong consumer orientation, the use of audience segmentation techniques and the selection of target audiences, the use of marketing’s conceptual framework (marketing mix and exchange theory), the recognition of competition, and continual marketing research. The purpose of the proposed study is to explore a consumer market segmentation technique (SEGMENT) successfully used in Europe for its applicability to social marketing campaigns in Florida. The SEGMENT project has developed a replicable and transferable market segmentation model to be used by all of the EU’s 27 member states when designing social marketing campaigns to persuade people to change their travel behavior and adopt more energy-efficient forms of transport (Intelligent Energy Europe, 2015). The SEGMENT project analyzed over 10,000 comprehensive attitudinal surveys containing over 100 questions to generate eight main attitudinal segments useful for the design of mobility social marketing campaigns; additional analysis produced eighteen ‘golden questions’ representing the smallest number of survey questions required to reproduce the eight market segments (Intelligent Energy Europe, 2015). The proposed study will replicate the SEGMENT methodology to determine whether the ‘golden questions’ accurately segment markets in Florida. Individuals will be surveyed using the long list of questions and discriminate analysis will be applied to identify the most powerful questions between the segments. Major contributions of this project will be the validation of a successful existing segmentation technique for applicability in the State of Florida, which will maximize the impact of TDM social marketing campaigns on changing travel behavior.

Language

  • English

Project

  • Status: Completed
  • Funding: $214,765
  • Contract Numbers:

    NITC 1057

  • Sponsor Organizations:

    Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

    University Transportation Centers Program
    Department of Transportation
    Washington, DC  United States  20590

    Florida Department of Transportation

    605 Suwannee Street
    Tallahassee, FL  United States  32399-0450
  • Managing Organizations:

    TREC at Portland State University

    1900 SW Fourth Ave, Suite 175
    P.O. Box 751
    Portland, Oregon  United States  97201
  • Project Managers:

    Hagedorn, Hau

  • Performing Organizations:

    University of South Florida, Tampa

    Center for Urban Transportation Research
    3650 Spectrum Boulevard
    Tampa, FL  United States  33612-9446
  • Principal Investigators:

    Lester, Amy

    Winters, Philip

  • Start Date: 20160801
  • Expected Completion Date: 20180630
  • Actual Completion Date: 20181001
  • USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program
  • Source Data: N/A

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01607650
  • Record Type: Research project
  • Source Agency: National Institute for Transportation and Communities
  • Contract Numbers: NITC 1057
  • Files: UTC, RIP
  • Created Date: Aug 16 2016 10:16AM