Write a white paper on a company of your choice and discuss the market segmentation within that industry along with the target market for the company and the selection process for that target market.
Required Elements:
No more than 2100 words
Include demographic, psychographic, geographic, and behavioral characteristics for the selected company.
A positioning statement for the company with careful consideration of their brand and strategy
Paper is consistent with APA guidelines.
Introduction:
The fundamental component of Market segmentation is a market-based strategy. A market segment is a purchase behaviors and different descriptive characteristics and specific group of customers with distinctive customer needs (Baker M.J, 1995) By categorizing markets into sub sectors, targeting marketing effort in such a way as to meet the other requirement and technical requirements of each of these, organizations may be able to secure big competitive position than if they attempted to satisfy the fundamental requirements of the market as a whole. In market segmentation there are four criteria that have to be satisfied in order for market segmentation to be effective. A market segment should be accessible, identifiable, substantial, and stable. In Identifiable, there should be indicators of observable that enable the segment to be defined and quantified (Baker M.J, 1995). Accessible, that is, it should be probable to target specifically the segment using distribution channels and existing communication. In Substantial, that the segment should be of enough size to make the effort involved in segmentation worthwhile. In the Stable, the segment there should be capitalized by sufficient time on the investment implicated in segmentation (Baker M.J, 1995).
Brief Discussion: Using a variety of philosophical approaches markets can be segmented in terms of operationalzing these approaches, demographic approaches, psychographic approaches, geographic
References: Baker, M.J. (1995), Marketing: Theory and practice, 3rd edn, Macmillan Press Ltd, Basingstoke, Hampshire. Dann, S. & Dann, S. (2004), Introduction to marketing, John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd., Milton, Queensland. HMV revised 2005, viewed 28 Jul. 2005, Armstrong, G. & Kotler, P. (2005), Marketing: An Introduction, 7th edn, Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. C. Homburg, J. P. Workman, Jr., and O. Jensen, “Fundamental Changes in Marketing Organization: The Movement Toward a Customer-Focused Organizational Structure,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Vol. 28, no. 4 (2000): 459–478