A case study for a psychographic-behavioral segmentation approach for targeted demand generation in voluntary medical male circumcision

Companies invest a significant amount of time and money into market research that helps them to understand the behaviors, beliefs and motivations of their potential customers. By then “segmenting” people into groups according to these characteristics, marketing messages can be produced that target specific groups more effectively. Most public health efforts are either mass communication campaigns or target particular age groups. However, some public health organizations are starting to study whether the segmenting tactics used by companies could also help to promote healthy behaviors. For example, male circumcision has been shown to reduce the transmission of HIV in Africa. Identifying the beliefs, emotions, motivations or other barriers that stop men from getting circumcised and then targeting specific messages to different groups could help to increase the number of men who opt for circumcision. Sgaier et al. now present evidence that suggests that segmentation could help to promote circumcision in Zimbabwe and Zambia. 4,000 men from these countries answered a survey that had been designed based on previous research that investigated how men make the decision whether to be circumcised. Analyzing the results using k-means clustering, a machine learning algorithm, enabled Sgaier et al. to identify six distinct segments in the men from Zimbabwe and seven in the men from Zambia. Further analyses found that the risk of contracting HIV also varied by segment. Sgaier et al. then demonstrated that field workers could use a series of questions to allocate men to each of the groups with an accuracy of over 60%. The segmentation method therefore looks like a promising tool that could be applied to a wide range of public health campaigns. As well as targeting specific groups of people with messaging that resonates specifically with them, segmentation could also highlight those people who are likely to be most easily convinced by a particular health intervention. More research is now needed to improve the usability of the tools that field workers can use to segment their audience.