Segmenting the Polish teenager market by sociocultural variables

This article presents the results of segmentation of the youth market in Poland using sociocultural criteria. The literature review and qualitative research have identified four trends influencing consumer behaviour in modern societies. These include: consumerism, greening, virtualisation and tribal consumption. Quantitative study using cluster analysis has allowed the market to be separated into five segments. Representatives of the first segment, called the Materialists, have a high level of consumerism, and especially materialism and impulsive consumption. Their opposite is the second segment – Ecologists, for whom the most important issues surround the greening of consumption. The third and largest segment is the Moderns, i.e.people who achieve high scores on all scales measuring the presence of consumer behaviours in the above-mentioned four trends. In contrast to them, representing the fourth segment, are the Traditionalists, who score lower on all result scales than the averages for all respondents. Finally, the fifth segment – Netizens – includes those people with the highest level virtualisation and tribalism. In the last section of the article, the author shows how the studies may be used during the planning of enterprise marketing activities.