KULTA the modeling of customers’ changing needs

(KULTA kuluttajien muuttuvien tarpeiden mallintaminen)

A project on modeling customer’s changing needs was kicked off today in Vierumäki. The project is a collaboration between Helsinki University, National Consumer Research Centre, and Helsinki University of Technology, and a number of companies.

Mika Pantzar and I had a presentation on the possibilities to use “practices as a basis for segmentation”. The argument was that practice segmentation would be a possibility to integrate markets rather than fragment them. I put below some of the slides that we used.

Mika Pantzar was in his part of the presentation stressing the dynamics of practices. How proto practices change into practices, and become at some point ex- practices.

He was also discussing amongst other things how practices come together into practice systems in which different practices are combined. This was illustrated with a magnificient animation ; )

This part of his work is developed together with Elizabeth Shove

My part of the presentation was on the research on cruising practices I did for my dissertation. I presented some ideas of how perhaps traditional segmentation and practice segmentation could be combined into a framework for managing companies in a consumption oriented manner.

I also presented some cases of companies that have approached the market in "search of universal and mundane practices" that through small practical improvements has proved to be very succesful businesses.

Our aim is to develop these thoughts into an article in the near future. This is, however, very much work in progress. The discussions in the workshop helped us in many ways to develop the thinking further. Thanks. I promise to answer or ask Mika to answer all further questions about our presentation. Feel free to post comments.