What Is Geographic Segmentation?

The vision for any business or initiative is always associated with profit and growth. To enhance the possibilities of both these much desired end results, the approach has to be segment specific and focused on the targeted market. According to the volume of business and the target market, it becomes necessary to identify specific zones and market requirements. The division, on the basis of geographical units is referred to as geographic segmentation.

Geographical segmentation is very beneficial to any business. It helps the marketing team to identify and segregate the market into units on the basis of:
- language
- climatic conditions
- lifestyles

This in turn helps the team to deal with the requirements of that segment and improve upon the product or service on the basis of the commonality identified. For example, a region or unit identified on the basis of common climatic conditions could be served better and well in time, to cope with the climate related requirement of the product or service. In addition, the product or service could be improvised to increase sales. Geographic segmentation also helps the company to focus on creating a team for every specific unit. This would ensure a focused approach and while sales are being enhanced, the future market demands could be anticipated in advance, which would in turn eliminate competition.

The geographic segmentation represents the market divided by location. The philosophy followed by this segmentation believes that people who live in the same area share some similar needs and wants and these needs and wants are different from the people who are living in the other parts of the country. For example some foods have high demands than other regions. So it varies from region to region. Geographic priorities also depend on the brands. In some area one brand might be very popular and famous. But in other areas it is quite possible people like different brands.

Some marketing professionals believe that due to globalization and internet world wide expansion have decreased all the geographic boundaries and all geographic marketing should be changed by the Global Marketing strategy. They say now ordinary people watch MTV, wear Levis jeans and eat McDonald's Pizza. Internet has given the power to consumers to make purchases online by sitting in any part of the world. This geographic segmentation can be done on the basis of region, City Size, Density of area, climate. Marketers have observed divergent consumers purchasing patterns among urban, suburban and rural areas. However geographic segmentation is very useful for marketers as a strategy.

People in one area might reflect similar characteristics; it is one way of evaluation human behavior based on common factors. People living in a particular area and territory might show some similar personality traits and common interests.

Geographic segmentation is a concept that is widely used in modern day business world when you are talking about marketing or launching new products or defining a customer base.

For example people living in a city, they face almost similar problems everyday, they are part of similar occasions, celebrations, events. So this influences the characteristics to reflect in a similar pattern.

Lets say another example to learn deeply, people in a country, they show some similar characteristics, they speak same language, the religion might be similar, they might wear specific design and quality of cloths, they might have similar likes and dislikes. They might show attraction towards some specific food or taste, they ideological sense can be similar to some extent because of living in a specific region.

Apart from segmenting on the bases of nature of people, we can segment areas based on the specific characteristics of that area, example is Amazon jungles, rain forests, mountains, sea, a group of islands. Karakoram Mountains.

Now Karakoram Mountains starts from Upper Part of Nepal and merge closely in mountains of Afghanistan. So we don't define them by the country, but we still call them the great Karakoram range despite ignoring the fact that it constitutes in 4 or more countries.

So dividing land based on specific characters can be called as geographic segmentation.