Designing a Customer Driven Statergy
chapter
Part 3: Designing a Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy and Integrated Marketing Mix
7
Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy
Creating Value for Target Customers
Previewing the Concepts
So far, you’ve learned what marketing is and about the importance of understanding consumers and the marketplace environment. With that as background, you’re now ready to delve deeper into marketing strategy and tactics. This chapter looks further into key customer-driven marketing strategy decisions—how to divide up markets into meaningful customer groups (segmentation), choose which customer groups to serve (targeting), create market offerings that best serve target customers (differentiation), and position the offerings in the minds of consumers (positioning). Then, the chapters that follow explore the tactical marketing tools—the Four Ps—by which marketers bring these strategies to life. As an opening example of segmentation, targeting, differentiation, and positioning at work, let’s look at Dunkin’ Donuts. Dunkin’, a largely Eastern U.S. coffee chain, has ambitious plans to expand into a national powerhouse, on a par with Starbucks. But Dunkin’ is no Starbucks. In fact, it doesn’t want to be. It targets a very different kind of customer with a very different value proposition. Grab yourself some coffee and read on.
L
ast year, Dunkin’ Donuts paid dozens of faithful customers in Phoenix, Chicago, and Charlotte, North Carolina, $100 a week to buy coffee at Starbucks instead. At the same time, the no-frills coffee chain paid Starbucks customers to make the opposite switch. When it later debriefed the two groups, Dunkin’ says it found them so polarized that company researchers dubbed them “tribes”— each of whom loathed the very things that made the other tribe loyal to their coffee shop. Dunkin’ fans viewed Starbucks as pretentious and trendy, whereas Starbucks loyalists saw Dunkin’ as plain and unoriginal. “I don’t get it,” one Dunkin’ regular told
Part 3: Designing a Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy and Integrated Marketing Mix
7
Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy
Creating Value for Target Customers
Previewing the Concepts
So far, you’ve learned what marketing is and about the importance of understanding consumers and the marketplace environment. With that as background, you’re now ready to delve deeper into marketing strategy and tactics. This chapter looks further into key customer-driven marketing strategy decisions—how to divide up markets into meaningful customer groups (segmentation), choose which customer groups to serve (targeting), create market offerings that best serve target customers (differentiation), and position the offerings in the minds of consumers (positioning). Then, the chapters that follow explore the tactical marketing tools—the Four Ps—by which marketers bring these strategies to life. As an opening example of segmentation, targeting, differentiation, and positioning at work, let’s look at Dunkin’ Donuts. Dunkin’, a largely Eastern U.S. coffee chain, has ambitious plans to expand into a national powerhouse, on a par with Starbucks. But Dunkin’ is no Starbucks. In fact, it doesn’t want to be. It targets a very different kind of customer with a very different value proposition. Grab yourself some coffee and read on.
L
ast year, Dunkin’ Donuts paid dozens of faithful customers in Phoenix, Chicago, and Charlotte, North Carolina, $100 a week to buy coffee at Starbucks instead. At the same time, the no-frills coffee chain paid Starbucks customers to make the opposite switch. When it later debriefed the two groups, Dunkin’ says it found them so polarized that company researchers dubbed them “tribes”— each of whom loathed the very things that made the other tribe loyal to their coffee shop. Dunkin’ fans viewed Starbucks as pretentious and trendy, whereas Starbucks loyalists saw Dunkin’ as plain and unoriginal. “I don’t get it,” one Dunkin’ regular told