Kim Yeon-Soo(The Graduate School of Mass Communication Sogang University)

In the limited market, a number of company is groping new stategies to survive its product in competition. And to find out the opportunity of positioning is rising important subject. In this respect, market segmentation strategy is one of the good method to increase the effect of marketing strategy and the effiency of marketing cost. There are diverse criteria in market segmentation. Recently psychological aspect is regarded to an important criterion of market segmentation because of the change of company environment related to consumer information adoption.

The objective of this study is to find out the possibility of consumer values as a criterion in auto market segmentation r

This study largely consists of literature review and empirical study. The theoretical part is conducted to build a hypothetical research model and research problems. And then collected data through surveys and applied various statistical methods.

The research problems established in empirical study are as follows;

1) To find out consumer values and to cluster consumer by values.

2) To compare the differences of auto consumption values according to the clustered groups.

3) To find out relation the auto consumption values with auto attributes.

A questionaire is developedto measure 4 items: personal values(the list of values; LOV)

Auto consumption values, the importance of auto attributes and demographic characterristics.

According to the empirical study, following are the results;

1) From the results of cluster analysis through LOV, consumers are segmented in 3 groups; relationship-oriented group, and security-oriented group.

2) The importance of auto consumption values are partially different according to consumer values. Security-oriented group is more concernded to basic performance factors and relationship-oriented group is more concerned to purchasing situations.

3) According to auto consumption values there are some differences in preferred auto attributes.

It can be concluded from the study that consumer values influence auto purchasing behavior indirectly. Therefore it is possible to use consumer values as a criterion in market segmentation.

But this study has some limitations. Measuring consumer values and auto consumption values, this study don't reflect the cultural differences and market situation.

These limitations must be carefully considered in the future studies.

Keyword: market segmentation, consumer values, auto consumption values, auto attributes.