Key marketing strategy decision making: How to divide up markets into meaningful customer groups (market segmentation), choose which customer groups to serve (target marketing), and created marketing offers that best serve targeted customers (positioning).
A target market consists of a set of buyers who share common needs or characteristics that the company decides to serve.
First Segmentation Example: 1 Sony 2 Instead of product managers, now managers are champions of demographic and psychographic segments 3 Affluent 4 CE Alphas (early adopters of technology at any age) 5 Zoomers (55+) 6 SoHo (Small office/Home office) 7 Families (35 to 54) 8 Young Professionals /DINKs (Double Income, No Kids; 25 to 34) 9 Gen Y (under 25)
Sony is looking at Boomers and Zoomers 1 In ’06, Sony learned that women make the household purchasing decisions on electronics 53% of the time; they decided it was time for a marketing makeover. "On the traditional level in the consumer electronics space, we’ve marketed to the male," says Barbara Miller, Director Corporate Web Services for Sony Electronics. "Our decision was that we needed to do a better job of addressing a female audience as well."
1 Marketing Surprise: Older shoppers buy too. 2 Consumer interviewed in WSJ and information from U.S. Census (4/6/2004) said, “Instead of repairing her car she was going to buy a Sony digital camcorder.
1 The TV spot said to her, "When your kids ask where the money went, show them the tape.” 2 As we get older there is less advertising to us and we stop getting attention. “But we still spend a lot of money.”
“Alpha Moms”: This new marketing target (replacing “Soccer Moms” and “Yoga Moms’) is an educated, tech savvy multitasker who views motherhood as a “job that can be mastered with diligent research.” She’s online 87 minutes a day, and spends 7% more than the typical Internet