EVALUATION OF ALTERNATIVE MARKET SEGMENTATIONS FOR TRANSPORTATION PLANNING

Abstract

Market segmentation in transportation planning is a division of a total population of travelers into groups (segments) which are relatively homogeneous with respect to certain personal characteristics (the segmentation base). It is desirable that the segments be distinct in terms of travel behavior and their reactions to changes in the travel environment such as the introduction of new transportation services. This report documents a comparison of market segmentation using six different bases. The first two segmentations represent alternative ways of dividing the population into groups which had homogeneous demographic characteristics; the second two segmentations divided the population into groups based upon such travel choice constraints as auto availability and transit service; the last two segmentations divided the population into groups based upon their responses to attitude surveys. Among these pairs of segmentations, some were multivariate, while others involved only a single variable. The six segmentations were compared with respect to five criteria judged to be important considerations in transportation planning: measurability (data availability), statistical robustness, substantiality (size and importance of resulting segments), relationship with travel behavior, and relationship with planning of service options. The comparisons showed that no single segmentation base was superior according to all criteria. On balance, however, multivariate segmentations. In addition, the segmentation based upon multivariate choice constraints satishied more of the criteria than other segmentation bases. Segmentations of the traveling population based upon attitudes were found to have certain specific uses but to be inferior to choice constraints segmentation for most planning purpose. /Author/

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