Um estudo comparativo de formas de segmentação de mercado: uma comparação entre VALS-2 e segmentação por variáveis demográficas com estudantes universitários

The consumers' segmentation has been used on strategic planning of companies and institutions with the objective of containing the consumers in accordance with certain characteristics that can give homogeneity to each group. This work investigated a relationship among the economic classes segmentation and the psychographics segmentation, that puts on the same group consumers in accordance with their attitudes, lifestyles, purchase behavior and demographic characteristics. The research used as subjects a convenience group formed by 367 students of a private institution of higher education, considering this people are future professional that will use segmentation techniques. Was used a questionnaire adapted from VALS-2 of the SRI Institute, together with the classification system ABIPEME. As result, was found that, in that group, the attitudes and lifestyles were distributed in a vertical line among all the economic classes detected in the group. As conclusion, for the tested group, little relationship exists among those two types of segmentation, the segmentation for economic classes offers few benefits for that market, the psychographic segmentation can be primordial tool for the marketing strategy and are necessary more adapted instruments of psychographic classification to the Brazilian consumer's particularities.