Shopper Digest: The Power of Segmentizing
In today’s FMCG market, understanding the shopper groups that truly matter to your brand is essential. With shoppers increasingly spoiled for choice and competition intensifying, segmentation helps reveal shopper behaviour, quantify the size and potential of each group, and guide more targeted strategies and sharper decisions.
Why is segmentation important?
Segmentation helps you focus on the shopper groups that matter most, driving smarter decisions and more targeted actions. For example, in the skincare market, people at different life stages and with different skin types follow different regimens. In the same way, segmentation can help brands streamline their approach and create more relevant, targeted strategies. The same holds for your brand — how well do you really know your consumers?
How can Worldpanel help you?
At Worldpanel, segmentation isn’t one-size-fits-all. We offer different approaches to help brands understand shoppers beyond simple demographics:
- Demographics Segmentation
Break down shoppers by region, ethnicity, income, family size, or life stage. This helps identify which groups are driving category growth or responding to promotions.
- Behavioural Segmentation
Focus on actual purchase patterns—frequency, basket size, brand switching, promo reliance, and channel preference,
- Attitudinal Segmentation
Combine purchase data with attitudes and lifestyle indicators. This goes deeper than claimed preferences, showing how values like health, sustainability, or convenience influence real buying decisions.
- Occasion-Based Segmentation
Understand when and why shoppers buy—whether it’s for everyday use, special occasions, or impulse purchases. This helps tailor messaging and product positioning.
Case Study: A premium brand in the market
Let’s take the personal care sector as an example.
Brand X, a niche premium brand, has been struggling to maintain recruitment over the past year.
Unlike essential products, Brand X occupies a secondary position in shoppers’ repertoires—it is considered an “added benefit” rather than a necessity. This means that if shoppers feel their basic needs are met, they are less likely to seek out Brand X.
The recent price increase has contributed to the decline in recruitment by making the brand less affordable for the broader audience. However, affordability is only part of the story—the bigger challenge lies in perceived value. Many shoppers do not see the need for our specialized premium benefit, and as a result, they are shifting toward other premium options, such as whitening products, which they view as offering more tangible benefits.
This is where Worldpanel can help. Instead of targeting the entire market, Worldpanel enables you to segmentize effectively - focusing on the Malay shopper group, which is the largest in Malaysia, and then narrowing down to those who value added benefits and have the potential to buy your brand. By filtering out shoppers who are unlikely to convert, you can concentrate resources on the most relevant audience and unlock real growth opportunities.
Recruitment decline doesn’t always mean the category is shrinking—it often signals a mismatch between your targeting strategy and the shoppers most likely to buy your brand. For Brand X, the opportunity lies in precision targeting: identifying Malay shoppers who value premium benefits and are willing to pay for them. Mass-market campaigns waste resources because most shoppers either don’t need the product or won’t justify the price. The power of segmentation lies in focus: reaching the shoppers who truly drive growth.
Source: P5 2025, Malaysia Peninsular Household Panel, Worldpanel by Numerator
