A-priori market segmentation designates groups of customers who are similar in terms of segmentation variable(s) that are known or believed in advance to be related to con- sumption of a company’s product, for example, demographics, purchase volume or geographic area. Segmentation variables are selected before analysis begins. The principal advantage of the a-priori approach is that the researcher is less apt to be led astray by a purely spurious classification system that may arise if “the data were permitted to speak for itself,” as is the case to a considerably greater degree when one uses a-posteriori approach. The main disadvantage of.
