Marketing

Lecture 13-14

Market Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

As small children, we are often taught to treat everyone alike, but this strategy doesn’t work in marketing. The goal of marketing is to create value and satisfy needs. However, everyone’s needs are not the same. Understanding needs is a complex task.

In this lecture you will learn why segmentation is important and the different dimensions used by marketers to segment the population. How marketers evaluate and select potential market segments is explained as is the development of a targeting strategy. You will understand how a firm develops and implements a positioning strategy. After careful study, you will learn that it’s not only okay to treat people differently but is a requirement in successful marketing.

learniNg OBJECTIVES

1. Define the three steps of target marketing: market segmentation, market targeting, and market positioning.

2. List and discuss the major bases for segmenting consumer markets.

3. Explain how companies identify attractive market segments and choose a target marketing strategy.

4. Discuss how companies position their products for maximum competitive advantage in the marketplace.

target marketing strategy: Selecting and entering a market

Understanding people’s needs is an even more complex task today because technological and cultural advances in modern society have created a condition of market fragmentation. This condition occurs when people’s diverse interests and backgrounds divide them into numerous different groups with distinct needs and wants. Because of this diversity, the same good or service will not appeal to everyone.

Marketers must balance the efficiency of mass marketing, serving the same items to everyone, with the effectiveness of offering each individual exactly what they want.

Marketers select a target marketing strategy in which they divide the total market into different segments based on customer characteristics,...