Transnationally mobile customers, who either relocated to other countries from their countries of origin or follow a circulatory pattern of migration, or professionals working in different divisions of transnational companies for short/long periods, or students studying abroad, or holiday makers who spend substantial periods abroad.
Published in Chapter:
Segmentation Challenges Posed by ‘Transnationals' in Mobile Marketing
Ibrahim Sirkeci (Regent’s College, UK) and Richard Mannix (Regent’s College, UK)
Copyright: © 2010
|Pages: 21
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-074-5.ch006
Abstract
Mobile technologies have posed new challenges for marketers as well as opportunities in an increasingly global market with high human mobility within and across borders. To understand and address customer needs more effectively, this chapter proposes to add new variables to market segmentations formula such as change of residence, movement and commuting distance/hours. A discussion of ‘mobile nationals’, and ‘transnationals’, as segments, is undertaken. The transnationals segment includes immigrants, refugees, tourists as well as businesspeople and professionals whose careers span into several countries. These groups create multiple reference points, which are likely to determine their characteristics and behaviour. This is an emerging and promising customer segment particularly for mobile marketing and mobile services. To explore the viability of such a segment, we have made use of several existing theoretical frameworks and concepts of segmentation. Future research should focus on the identification of transnational and national mobile segments while also developing and fine tuning the new variables –movement, change of residence and commuting for segmentation theory.