Wednesday 28 April 2010

Segmentation Targeting Positioning a beginners guide by Sir George Mark McCann

Say you were a company about to launch a product the key to making that product successfully is making sure you choose the right segment of the market to a line your product with, to ensure you hit the right target market within that section and to decide were you want to position yourselves in the current market.

First of all segmentation. When people talk about marketing their product which could be anything a brand a service or an the product itself, who are they marketing it to? Can you just market to everybody? Well, theoretically, you could and as Solman puts it in Consumer Behaviour (a European Perspective) in many cases, it makes a lot of sense to target a number of market segments. The likelihood is that no will fit any given segment descriptions exactly, and the issue is whether or not consumers differ from our profile in ways that will affect the chances of adopting the products we are offering (Solman,2006,P.9). This can be a benefit appealing to the masses but remember the bigger the market you enter the result can be higher costs and minimizing costs should look to maximise profit which should always be on the agenda.

When looking at where to market, you should always consider two things, targeting and positioning. How do you choose criteria for targeting? How do you position your product or service? You should realise that you will have to segment your market its rarely that your product is a need of everyone unless your are say the UK Post Office or commodities like bread and milk but even they full under different segments market eg. brown/white bread or full fat and semi skimmed milk.. Why segment you ask? Remember that needs are diverse all consumers are individuals some will follow similar trends yet every one is unique so you need to find to segment that appeals broadly to consumers of similar needs. Markets are rarely the same. Segmentation allows us to view the market from the customers position. We can design more focused strategies and its helps us to see opportunity to further product and see growth the brand.

In Solomans book of Consumer Behaviour he splits segmentation into 6 sub category's.

Age

Gender

Family Structure

Social class and Income

Race and ethnicity

Geography

These are the six main different factors you need to look at when choosing your market segment. The next phase really in marketing is who is your target look into who are the players within the market is one segment of the market being well served if so it might be an indication to stay clear of this as the competition will be a lot tougher. Possibly try to find a market segment with room for improvement and deliver a service or product better than them? Look into the size of the market your looking to target is there room for your company to grow? Thirdly a key I believe in is can you appeal to one group of consumers more than other firms the USP is so vital in giving you that edge over other companies.

Positioning the only way I can see to explain this is by comparing the positioning of another company for example Apple Mac computers are trying to brand their software as easy to use even to the extent were Microsoft are no trying to copy them Windows Seven to compete with there user friendly image and just the general cool things you can do on a Mac. So Mac positions there selves as being user friendly and cool but also position themselves with out over advert sing the fact that there Visual C software inside it is actually aimed at techies positioning themselves in two markets which is genius in my eyes. Which may add to the ultimate and endless success as Macintosh as company.





I hope you enjoyed my insight into segmentation, targeting and positioning. All resources were drawn from my knowledge and the almighty Soloman. Any other resources are listed as follows: Marketing Segmentation how to do it, how to profit from it Authors: Malcolm MacDonald and Ian Dunbar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzpGI9O9mVs. www.learnmarketing.net.

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