Self-reference bias in students' and managers' selection of target market segments

- Self-reference bias exists in students, despite exposure to marketing training.
- Self-reference bias even persists among qualified marketing managers.
- Target market decisions are biased toward the age and gender of the selector.
- Developing awareness of this bias is proposed as a strategy to overcome it.

Self-reference is a fundamental aspect of the learning process; all students use themselves as a model to understand others and the things around them. In this paper, we consider how self-reference as a learning technique leads students to unconsciously use themselves as a model for target segments in marketing plans. As many business teachers have probably experienced, students tend to choose to market most products to young adults in their assessments. The act of studying marketing within a business degree should effectively reduce this bias; students should use business and marketing models and empirical approaches as per their teaching when defining a target segment for their marketing plans. What this paper shows, however, is that this self-referential bias remains present in students and even persists among qualified managers working in marketing departments, despite marketing tools and even stereotypes. We identify an immediate practical strategy for business and marketing educators to use to respond to this issue.