Overview
SEGMENT sought to employ consumer segmentation techniques to overcome perceptual or attitudinal barriers to the uptake of sustainable and energy-efficient mobility by EU citizens. Research suggests that 'life change moments' offer some of the best opportunities for fostering behaviour change. As people change jobs, move house or undergo other major change, they reflect on their habits and often make significant changes.
It is at these points that marketing campaigns may be particularly effective in promoting more sustainable travel habits. However, it is appreciated that even within these 'segments' there will be a variety of attitudes towards the use of sustainable transport. Through the use of detailed attitudinal surveys our understanding of what motivates these groups will be improved. This will allow for the development of bespoke marketing campaigns and initiatives which will have a greater chance of success then traditional 'one-size-fits-all' approaches.
SEGMENT will:
- promote less car-dependent lifestyles;
- build on tried-and-tested strategies and methodologies and aim at achieving energy savings by removing the non-technological (perceptual or attitudinal) market barriers;
- achieve measurable changes in transport behaviour;
- contribute to the wider dissemination and use of proven, transferable strategies and methodologies;
- help end-users to take informed decisions and increase public acceptance of more energy-efficient transport use;
- train practitioners and officials whose daily work has an impact on take-up of energy-efficient transport strategies and schemes via training workshops and through exchanges of staff;
- tackle sustainable mobility more effectively through appropriate consultation and involvement of a broad range of stakeholders including end-users;
- Increase the integration of strategies to help to steer the behaviour and decisions of transport users, authorities and operators.
- A Survey Methodology – with surveys in seven languages
- Three targeted marketing campaigns implemented in each of the six cities
- Marketing material developed in six languages
- EU capacity building via discussion groups, forums and training
- Transferability Report - This report suggests how the process can be simplified in order to make it easier and more cost-effective for other cities. The report takes the format of a series of key questions to enable the key learning outcomes from SEGMENT to be understood and applied elsewhere.
Results
The results of each of the city campaigns show that overall, SEGMENT does work and when used correctly, can be effective in developing bespoke campaigns that encourage modal shift to sustainable modes.
The challenge of evaluating SEGMENT
SEGMENT has attempted a scientifically robust and thorough method of evaluating its 'double segmentation' approach. It has assessed the impact of the campaigns on each life-change target group and then divided these groups further to assess the impact on even smaller attitudinal sub-groups in the population. This was extremely ambitious and the evaluation process has been challenging. For instance, the relatively small target groups in most cities meant that the results were often not statistically significant. In addition, It can be very difficult to find comparable 'control groups' and this lack of comparability will impact the outcome of the results often making the impact in the treated group look smaller than it was. In addition, people can take a while to respond to travel behaviour interventions including campaigns and it is possible that some mode shift may have occurred after the evaluation surveys were undertaken for some of the campaigns (such as in the next school year, for example).
Nevertheless, as this report shows, various aspects of the segmentation approach have proven to be effective and to have provided both a useful creative experience for the partner cities and to have proven to be effective in achieving a level or direction of behaviour change that may not have been achieved with more blanket campaigns.
The value of targeting 'life change moments'
Based on comments from some of the cities, there is a mixed reaction to 'double segmentation'. Although there are a number of reasons why targeting a life change moment is beneficial, this is likely to only work for some campaigns. It also makes evaluating schemes more complicated in some cases.
Both Sofia and Gdynia felt that double segmentation was not essential because those individuals not under-going a life change moment felt left-out or discriminated against. This is especially true where campaigns offer desirable rewards to those participating and other individuals feel they are being cheated out of a chance to win prizes/benefits. On the other hand, Munich and Utrecht could see the benefit of using a life change moment as a 'way in' for a campaign. This suggests that those locations with more mature experience of sustainable
transport