Segmentation & Positioning

FOCUSING MARKETING STRATEGY WITH SEGMENTATION AND POSITIONING
Understanding Markets
Strategy planning to narrow down the process - understand your customers
Identify the market based on the marketing mix - 4 Ps
Don’t just focus on the product, e.g., Hallmark sells more than just greeting cards
Generic markets: market with similar needs and sellers offering diverse to satisfy those needs
Product market: market with very similar needs and sellers offering various close substitute ways of satisfying those needs
Broaden market definitions to find opportunities

Defining Product-Markets and Generic Markets
Evaluating opportunities in product-related terms does not adequately describe a market
A complete product-market definition includes a four part description:
Product type (type of good and/or service)
Customer (user) needs
Customer types
Geographic area
Product-market boundaries provide focus

Market Segmentation to Define Target Markets
Name broad product-markets - Disaggregating
Segment these product-markets to select target markets and develop suitable marketing mixes – Aggregating
Ideal market segments must be:
Homogeneous within
Heterogeneous between
Substantial
Operational

Marketing Approaches
All three involve target marketing
First two approaches: Segmenters
Develop a different mix for each segment
Fine-tune their marketing mix
Don’t settle for lower profits
Build on close relationships with customers
Last approach: Combiners
Increase target market size
Combine two or more markets
Achieve economies of scale
Less investment for marketing
More difficult to develop a marketing mix
Profit is the balancing point

Dimensions for Segmenting Markets
All potential dimensions
Customers have the money to buy clothes
They go shopping in a mall
Qualifying dimensions
Determining dimensions (Product)
Determining dimensions (Brand)
Segmenting Dimensions
May be of many types: demographic, geographic, behavioral etc.
Can