Essentialism is an Illusion

In his book Everything is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger debunks market segmentation based on essentialism.

Particular demographic properties are selected because the marketers believe they define a group susceptible to the same message; hence 18-24 year old suburban males get the “It'll make you tough” advertising while the females get the “Boys will like you” message ... Thinking that 18-24 year old suburban males exist as a market [online] – as something more than a random slice [of the population] – gets in the way of seeing the truly fascinating phenomenon: miscellaneous customers finding one another in the digital world and forming real social groups, not because they share essential demographic traits but because they're talking with one another. The markets that conversations make are real markets, not mere statistical clusterings.

Essentialism makes the world seem more manageable, but it can lead us to miss what's really going on.

Essentialism worked in the TV-industrial complex because mass media was able to isolate people and bombard them with archetypes until they become convinced they fit the moulds made for them by the marketers. The vast majority of teenage boys in the 90's didn't share any essential traits with Michael Jordan, but Nike kept telling them they “want to be like Mike” over and over and over again until they believed it. Once convinced, they expressed it the only way they could; by getting his $200 Nike Air Jordan shoes, the $100 Air Jordan training suit, etc. The market was created by the marketing.

The online world promotes individuality, miscellaneousness, infinite choice, and user control. It is an environment in which the old marketing strategies cannot succeed because interrupting people with marketing messages whenever and for however long you want is impossible. This means that marketers, and by extension market researchers, must fundamentally rethink their approach.