Market Segmentation Strategies

Marketing & Other Functions

  • Marketing interacts with other business functions:

    • Purchasing: Raw materials, packaging

    • R&D: New product development

    • Manufacturing: Inventory, production

    • Accounting: Product costing, pricing

    • Finance: Promo budgets, cash flow

    • Top Management: Brand planning, SBUs

Marketing Strategy

  • Key elements: Segmentation, USP, Positioning, Differentiation, Products, Promotion, Place, Price, Customers, Competition, Collaborators, Company Analysis, Research, Strategic Planning, Implementation, Context.

Strategic Leverage Triangulation

  • Considers customer needs, drivers of choice, core competencies, competitive advantages & vulnerabilities.

STP (Segmenting, Targeting, and Positioning)

  • Segmentation: Identify bases, develop segment profiles.

  • Targeting: Measure attractiveness, select segments.

  • Positioning: Develop positioning & marketing mix for each segment.

Four Key Steps to Marketing Strategy

  • Define the Market

  • Segment the Market, Choose attractive segments

  • Position offering

  • Design a Marketing Mix to Appeal to the Target Segment(s)

Define the Market

  • Determine who is likely to buy the product and who is not

Customer Orientation

  • Marketing Philosophy emphasizing the customer.

  • Examples:

    • Lou Gerstner (ex-Chairman IBM) :“I came here with a view that you start the day with customers, that you start thinking about a company around its customers”

    • Jack Welch (ex-CEO, G.E.):“Stop being a company with its face towards the CEO and back towards the customer”

    • Steve Jobs (Jandali): “ Get closer to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves”

    • Jeff Bezos (Former CEO, Amazon) : “. . .we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them.”

Ethnography

  • Ethnography: Walking In Their Shoes (W.I.T.S.) Study

  • Live, Analyze, Market

Cut the Market, Choose Segments

  • Determine who can delight customers better than competitors.

  • Select target segments.

Divide the Market into