Do Emerging Markets Consumers Interact Equally, Similarly Or Completely Different With Companies? : A Finite Mixture Segmentation In The Financial Services Sector

The increasing attractiveness of emerging markets (EMs), along with the progressing
internationalization raises the question of whether setting up a unified marketing
strategy for EMs and high income countries (HICs) or not. No studies exist that
entail a focus on EMs. In this paper, we establish the requirements for international
segmentation that includes EMs and test our approach numerically by finite mixture
model with data on global consumer multichannel (search and purchase) behavior
(n=20'732). In doing so, we further enhance existing latent class models by combining
information on consumer channel usage patterns with covariates on consumer and
on country level.