Integrating marketing databases through regressed microsegmentation

In order to quantitatively target media to markets, media planners need a data base that contains both target market membership and media usage variables. In the absence of single-source data, containing both kinds of variables, researchers have sought to synthesize, or integrate, these data through a variety of different approaches. One of the most elegant is microsegmentation. While the approach has been shown to consistently underestimate the concentration of target market members in the most selective media vehicles, this study suggests that the method might produce a proper ordering, or better yet, a proportionate evaluation of media. This, in turn, suggests that a regression equation might be used to adjust initial estimates of target market concentrations, thus providing a better means of linking target market and media data bases.