ICT research group IDC Australia's first segmentation analysis of the consumer market has identified six distinct Australian consumer segments.

The report, titled "It's Not Easy To Be Me: Australian Consumer Differential Segmentation" discusses consumer motivations and their significance within IDC's Consumer Intelligence Framework (CIF) Methodology, the differential segmentation of Australian consumers, and the evolutionary pathways for each consumer segment. Key findings in the report include:

- The differential segmentation model identifies consumers as emerging, innovative, mainstream, converging, indulgent, and settled. Each segment is defined by a confluence of parameters including demographics, motivations, knowledge, and usage and adoption patterns.

- The consumer motivations toward technology are value, necessity, utility, luxury and convergence.

- Besides nurturing consumer understanding as a means to shape their potential behaviour, technology vendors should balance their core competencies whilst driving innovation, be consumer-segment specific and ensure a tight alignment between their positioning and the target markets.

- IDC concludes that consumers are continually evolving and seeking benefits most relevant to their lifestyles. Technology players' ability to identify the nature and expected behaviour of each consumer segment and to understand and respond to their needs, will be instrumental in winning the consumer market battle.

"As each consumer segment has its own characteristics and particular requirements, meaningful identification of their nature and expected behaviour helps technology players understand and better serve their customers", said Jerson Yau, Mobile & Wireless associate analyst, and co-author of IDC's latest consumer market report.

Warren Chaisatien, Mobile & Wireless research manager, added that the CIF and the ensuing differential segmentation model can be used to evaluate any technology. "Since mobile services are ubiquitous in Australia, we have used them as proxies to demonstrate the potential applications of the CIF and segmentation model via the mapping of major mobile carrier positioning, mobile content portal awareness and usage, and consumer segment mobile consumption."

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