Specifics of studying the target audience for effective allocation of advertising budgets in companies providing services

This work makes an attempt at a systematic comprehension of modern methodological approaches to target audience research that underlie optimal advertising budget allocation. The aim of the research is to develop and substantiate a unified methodological toolkit for precise identification and segmentation of service consumers, ensuring a significant increase in the efficiency of marketing investments. As the theoretical and methodological platform, principles of systems analysis, methods of statistical processing of big data and cohort analysis, as well as an integrative review of specialized publications, were used. As a result of the analysis of existing practices, strengths and weaknesses of common approaches to segmentation and targeting were identified. Based on the obtained conclusions, a multi-level model of target audience research is proposed. Implementation of the proposed model allows for enhancing the accuracy of identifying relevant segments and rationalizing budget distribution among communication channels, which ultimately leads to an increase in the overall effectiveness of advertising campaigns. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the synthesis of behavioral, psychographic and predictive methods for dynamic audience segmentation in the service sector, which expands the existing theoretical toolkit and opens new opportunities for practical application in marketing. The results obtained will be of interest both to researchers specializing in marketing communications and consumer behavior and to executives and practitioners in the sphere of service provision.