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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
William E. Pollard, PhD, Office of Communication, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Rd., N.E, Mail Stop D42, Atlanta, GA 30333, (404) 639-7295, bdp4@cdc.gov
Audience segmentation principles from commercial marketing are increasingly recommended in the health communication literature. These principles can be used to decide which segments of the population to target with the message, and to identify audience segments that may differ in interests, lifestyle, and media habits in order to design messages with the appropriate content, design, and media channels. In commercial marketing, segmentation plans are often evaluated using Lorenz curves or gains curves. Charts with these curves, along with tables on which the curves are based, provide a clear picture of the gains due to segmentation, and provide a basis for evaluating the merits of alternative segmentation plans. These techniques have rarely been used in health communication planning. The purpose of this presentation is to describe how these techniques can be applied. An overview is provided, and similarities and differences in commercial and public health communication pertaining to the use of the techniques are discussed. Examples are provided ranging from traditional demographic segmentation plans to those developed with PRIZM lifestyle segmentation and data mining methods. Software for segmentation gains analysis is discussed.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Communication, Social Marketing
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.