Understanding what exactly is customer segmentation: PART -2

Ashimabha Bose
5 min readMay 16, 2023

Introduction:

Customer segmentation is a powerful technique that allows businesses to divide their customer base into distinct groups based on shared characteristics. By segmenting customers, companies can gain valuable insights into their behavior, preferences, and needs, enabling targeted marketing strategies, personalized experiences, and improved customer satisfaction. In this blog, we will explore the concept of customer segmentation and walk you through the process of performing customer segmentation using Python.

Table of Contents:

1. What is Customer Segmentation?
2. Benefits of Customer Segmentation
3. Getting Started with Customer Segmentation in Python
a. Data Preparation and Exploration
b. Feature Selection and Engineering
c. Segmentation Techniques
i. Demographic Segmentation
ii. Behavioral Segmentation
iii. Psychographic Segmentation
d. Applying Clustering Algorithms
e. Evaluating Segment Performance
4. Example: Customer Segmentation Using K-means Clustering
5. Conclusion

Section 1: What is Customer Segmentation?

Explain the concept of customer segmentation, emphasizing the importance of dividing customers into meaningful groups based on characteristics such as demographics, behavior, or preferences. Mention that customer segmentation helps businesses understand their customers better and tailor their marketing strategies accordingly.

Section 2: Benefits of Customer Segmentation

Highlight the advantages of customer segmentation, such as improved targeting, personalized marketing campaigns, increased customer loyalty, and enhanced profitability. Discuss how customer segmentation enables businesses to optimize resource allocation and deliver a superior customer experience.

Section 3: Getting Started with Customer Segmentation in Python

Provide a step-by-step guide on performing customer segmentation using Python. Cover the following sub-sections:

a. Data Preparation and Exploration:
Explain the importance of data preparation and exploration, including data cleaning, handling missing values, and scaling variables. Show how to load and preprocess the dataset using Python libraries such as Pandas and NumPy.

# Import the required libraries
import pandas as pd

# Load the dataset
df = pd.read_csv('customer_data.csv')

# Explore the dataset
print(df.head()) # Display the first few rows of the dataset
print(df.info()) # Get information about the dataset, such as column names and data types

b. Feature Selection and Engineering:
Discuss the process of selecting relevant features for segmentation and potentially engineering new features from the existing dataset. Explain techniques such as one-hot encoding, normalization, or creating derived features.

# Select the relevant features
selected_features = df[['Age', 'Income', 'Spending']]

# Perform feature engineering if necessary
# e.g., creating derived features, normalizing variables, etc.

# Example of feature engineering: Normalizing the 'Income' and 'Spending' variables
selected_features['Income_Normalized'] = (selected_features['Income'] - selected_features['Income'].mean()) / selected_features['Income'].std()
selected_features['Spending_Normalized'] = (selected_features['Spending'] - selected_features['Spending'].mean()) / selected_features['Spending'].std()

# Dropping the original features
selected_features.drop(['Income', 'Spending'], axis=1, inplace=True)

# Check the updated feature set
print(selected_features.head())

c. Segmentation Techniques:
Introduce different segmentation techniques, including demographic, behavioral, and psychographic segmentation. Explain the characteristics and variables used for each technique, providing examples of how businesses can gather and utilize the required data.

# Perform demographic segmentation
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans

# Select the demographic variables for clustering
demographic_data = df[['Age', 'Gender', 'Income', 'Location']]

# One-hot encode the categorical variables
demographic_data_encoded = pd.get_dummies(demographic_data)

# Apply K-means clustering
kmeans = KMeans(n_clusters=4, random_state=42)
kmeans.fit(demographic_data_encoded)

# Assign cluster labels to each customer
df['Demographic_Segment'] = kmeans.labels_

# View the segment distribution
segment_counts = df['Demographic_Segment'].value_counts()
print(segment_counts)




# Perform behavioral segmentation
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans

# Select the behavioral variables for clustering
behavioral_data = df[['Purchase_Frequency', 'Browsing_Pattern', 'Campaign_Engagement']]

# Apply K-means clustering
kmeans = KMeans(n_clusters=3, random_state=42)
kmeans.fit(behavioral_data)

# Assign cluster labels to each customer
df['Behavioral_Segment'] = kmeans.labels_

# View the segment distribution
segment_counts = df['Behavioral_Segment'].value_counts()
print(segment_counts)




# Perform psychographic segmentation
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans

# Select the psychographic variables for clustering
psychographic_data = df[['Lifestyle', 'Interests', 'Values', 'Attitudes']]

# Apply K-means clustering
kmeans = KMeans(n_clusters=5, random_state=42)
kmeans.fit(psychographic_data)

# Assign cluster labels to each customer
df['Psychographic_Segment'] = kmeans.labels_

# View the segment distribution
segment_counts = df['Psychographic_Segment'].value_counts()
print(segment_counts)

d. Applying Clustering Algorithms:
Demonstrate the application of clustering algorithms for customer segmentation. Focus on popular algorithms like K-means, Hierarchical Clustering, or DBSCAN. Explain how these algorithms group customers based on similarity and provide code examples using Python libraries such as Scikit-learn.

# Apply clustering algorithm
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans

# Select the relevant features for clustering
features = df[['Feature1', 'Feature2', 'Feature3']]

# Choose the number of clusters
num_clusters = 4

# Initialize the clustering algorithm
kmeans = KMeans(n_clusters=num_clusters, random_state=42)

# Fit the model to the data
kmeans.fit(features)

# Get the cluster labels for each data point
cluster_labels = kmeans.labels_

# Assign the cluster labels to the dataset
df['Segment'] = cluster_labels

# View the segment distribution
segment_counts = df['Segment'].value_counts()
print(segment_counts)

e. Evaluating Segment Performance:
Discuss how to evaluate the performance of customer segments using metrics like silhouette score or within-cluster sum of squares. Explain the importance of regularly reviewing and refining segments to ensure their effectiveness.

# Evaluate segment performance
import pandas as pd

# Calculate the average values for each segment
segment_performance = df.groupby('Segment').mean()

# Calculate the size of each segment
segment_sizes = df['Segment'].value_counts()

# Combine the segment performance and sizes into a single dataframe
segment_summary = pd.concat([segment_performance, segment_sizes], axis=1)
segment_summary.columns = ['Average Feature1', 'Average Feature2', 'Average Feature3', 'Segment Size']

# Sort the segments by size in descending order
segment_summary = segment_summary.sort_values(by='Segment Size', ascending=False)

# Calculate the segment proportions
segment_summary['Segment Proportion'] = segment_summary['Segment Size'] / segment_summary['Segment Size'].sum()

# Display the segment summary
print(segment_summary)

Section 4: Example: Customer Segmentation Using K-means Clustering

Provide a detailed example of performing customer segmentation using the K-means clustering algorithm. Walk through the entire process, from data preprocessing to applying the algorithm and visualizing the results. Include Python code snippets and visualizations to make it easy for readers to follow along.

# Customer Segmentation Using K-means Clustering
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Select the features for segmentation
features = df[['Feature1', 'Feature2']]

# Choose the number of clusters
num_clusters = 3

# Initialize the K-means clustering algorithm
kmeans = KMeans(n_clusters=num_clusters, random_state=42)

# Fit the model to the data
kmeans.fit(features)

# Get the cluster labels for each data point
cluster_labels = kmeans.labels_

# Add the cluster labels to the dataset
df['Segment'] = cluster_labels

# Visualize the clusters
plt.scatter(df['Feature1'], df['Feature2'], c=cluster_labels, cmap='viridis')
plt.xlabel('Feature1')
plt.ylabel('Feature2')
plt.title('Customer Segmentation')
plt.show()

Section 5: Conclusion

Summarize the key points discussed in the blog and emphasize the value of customer segmentation for businesses. Encourage readers to explore customer segmentation techniques further and leverage Python to gain actionable insights from their customer data.

Conclusion:

Customer segmentation empowers businesses to understand their customers better and make informed decisions based on their unique needs and preferences. By leveraging Python’s data analysis and machine learning capabilities, businesses can perform customer segmentation efficiently and effectively. Implementing customer segmentation strategies can unlock valuable insights, drive targeted marketing campaigns, and ultimately boost business success.

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Ashimabha Bose
Ashimabha Bose

Written by Ashimabha Bose

Senior Business Analyst | Power BI | Digital Marketer | Data Analyst | AI Enthusiast

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