Adaptive Selling: 고객유형에 따른 소비자 분류와 마케팅 전략

Marketing research started from the idea that all consumers are different. Firms’ marketing management begins with segmentation of various consumers. The focus of this study is on investigating how to divide consumers effectively and what the appropriate strategy to each customer orientation is. The customer orientation is divided into three different segments, namely ‘Task-oriented’, ‘Self-oriented’, and ‘Interaction-oriented’ customers. In addition, there are six types of Seller Influence Tactics (SITs), which enable sales people to properly approach consumers according to the customer orientation. This research answers what kinds of SITs should be employedaccording to the customer orientation, which causes customers to recognize that the persuasive powers of sales people are high and thus increase their purchase satisfaction. While study on Adaptive Selling has been conducted in the U.S. for forty years, it is not abundant in Korea. The result of this inquiry suggests criteria to segment consumers into three types. This research also plays a significantrole as a bridge to perform further investigation regarding each customer orientation. In terms of practice, this study indicates that corporations have segmented consumers merely using demographic variables, which leads to an inability to make good use of customer databases. In addition, the models proposed in our investigation provide managers with an effective segmentation criterion and the right marketing approach according to customer orientation.