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Basic Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

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Segmentation
When entering a market, an organisation needs to identify its customers and what its customer needs are. A business can’t go into a market with a product and expect to sell it, because the demand for the product may not be there. It is important for the business to plan thoroughly before entering a market and understand the diverse nature of a market. For example, a market may have large range of consumers who have different tastes, preference and needs. So this is where the concept of segmentation will be applied.

Segmentation is defined as ‘the identification of individuals or organisations with similar characteristics that have significant implications for the determination of marketing strategy’. To break this down, …show more content…

Target marketing
An important part of marketing is selecting the market you want to enter to provide your products or services. So once you have successfully used market segmentation to divide your market into reasonable consumer segments, you then need to use targeting to choose the market you are going to serve.

Choosing a market to serve is an extremely important decision a business will need to make, because a bad decision at this stage could result in failure. To help make the right decision, a company should use criteria to evaluate a market, for example: * Effective * Measurable * Accessible * Actionable * Profitable (foot note) Another method of evolution would be the SMART objectives method: * Specific * Measurable * Achievable * Realistic * Time scaled

Either way, an organisation should evaluate their potential market before entering them. There have been cases where businesses have entered markets and failed, because they did not evaluate effectively. ‘In 2003, Burger King introduced a new line of chicken sandwiches aimed at appealing to a more health-conscious demographic (the BK Baguette Sandwiches). The product never caught on in the U.S. and was quickly replaced with the TenderGrill Sandwich’. It’s evident that of a failing product and more importantly evidence of poor marketing strategy. If burger king used targeting properly, the product may have been more

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