Segmenting household electricity customers with quantitative and qualitative approaches

Understanding private electric utility customers is essential given their central role in the sustainability transition of the electricity system. Socio-economic attributes, environmental attitude, and electricity consumption are not enough to take the new technological, economic and regulatory bases of the residential electricity markets in many industrialized countries into account. Further attributes can help to obtain a more holistic understanding of the private electricity customer. We conduct three studies and find a good correspondence of the customer segments resulting from a survey of the literature, an expert workshop, and a survey of Swiss electricity customers. Five key customer segments are distinguished: 1) affluent and quality-oriented, 2) ecologically aware, 3) technophile, 4) regionally rooted, and 5) stable and uninterested. Due to their unique energy preferences, these customer segments represent critical boundary conditions for technology adoption driven sustainability transitions. Assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the segmentation methods suggest that with sufficient resources a combination can produce reliable and valid segments.