Market Segmentation and Product Positioning

Copyright © 2005 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Chapter 15

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• Selection of the appropriate target market is paramount to developing successful marketing programs

• Market segmentation is based on the idea that a single product usually will not appeal to all consumers

Introduction

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• Market segmentation is the process of dividing a market into groups of similar consumers and selecting the most appropriate group(s) of individuals for the firm to serve

• Five tasks in the process of market segmentation

Introduction cont.

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Analyze Consumer-Product Relationships

• Entails analysis of the affect and cognition, behavior, and environments involved in the purchase/consumption process for the particular product

• Three general approaches– Brainstorm the product concept

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Analyze Consumer-Product Relationships cont.

– Focus groups and other types of primary research

– Secondary research

• Considerable information is available for analyzing various markets for many established product categories

• For many products, the initial breakdown in markets is between the prestige and mass markets

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Investigate Segmentation Bases• No simple way to determine the best bases

for segmenting markets

• Benefits segmentation– Benefits people seek in consuming a given

product is the basic reason for the existence of true market segments

– Attempts to measure consumer value systems and consumers’ perceptions of various brands in a product class

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Investigate Segmentation Bases cont.

• Psychographic segmentation– Divides markets on differences in consumer

lifestyles– Generally follows a post hoc model– Studies often include hundreds of questions and

provide a tremendous amount of information about consumers

– The validity of this segmentation is sometimes questioned

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Investigate Segmentation Bases cont.– Development of VALSTM

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Investigate Segmentation Bases cont.

• Person/Situation segmentation– Markets can often be divided on the basis of the

usage situation in conjunction with individual differences of consumers

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Investigate Segmentation Bases cont.

– Combines not only the persona and the situation, but also other important segmentation bases

• Benefits sought• Product and attribute perceptions• Marketplace behavior

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Investigate Segmentation Bases cont.

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Investigate Segmentation Bases cont.

• Geodemographic segmentation– Identifies specific households by focusing on

local neighborhood geography to create classifications of actual, addressable, mappable neighborhoods where consumers live and shop

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Investigate Segmentation Bases cont.

– PRIZM system• Based on the assumptions that consumers in

particular neighborhoods are similar in many respects and that the best prospects are those who actually use a product or other consumes like them

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Develop Product Positioning• Positioning the product relative to competing

products in the minds of consumers

• Key objective is to form a particular brand image in consumers’ minds

• Accomplished by developing a coherent strategy that may involve all of the marketing mix elements

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Develop Product Positioning cont.• Positioning by attribute

– Associate a product with an attribute, a product feature, or a customer feature

– A new product can be positioned with respect to an attribute ignored by competitors

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Develop Product Positioning cont.– Sometimes a product can be positioned in

terms of two or more attributes simultaneously– The price/quality attribute dimension is

commonly used for positioning products as well as stores

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Develop Product Positioning cont.• Positioning by use or application

– Products can have multiple positioning strategies, although increasing the number involves difficulties and risks

• Positioning by product user

• Positioning by product class

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Develop Product Positioning cont.• Positioning by competitors

– The major purpose is to convince consumers that a brand is better than the market leader on important attributes

• Positioning maps– A visual depiction of consumers’ perceptions of

competitive products, brands, or models

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Develop Product Positioning cont.– Constructed by surveying consumers about

various product attributes and developing dimension and a graph indicating the relative position of competitors

– Can give marketers a sense of how their brands are perceived by consumers relative to competitors and suggest positioning strategies

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Develop Product Positioning cont.

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Select Segmentation Strategy• Four basic segmentation strategy

alternatives– May decide not to enter the market– May decide not to segment but to be a mass

marketer– May decide to market to only one segment– May decide to market more than one segment

and design a separate marketing strategy for each

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Select Segmentation Strategy cont.• Marketers must have some criteria on which

to base segmentation strategy decisions– Must be able to measure the segment’s size

and characteristics– Must be large enough to be meaningful– Must be marketable

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Design Marketing Mix Strategy• Selecting the target market and designing

the marketing mix go hand-in-hand

• Many marketing mix decisions are made in conjunction with target market selections

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Summary• Market segment was defined

• Market segmentation was analyzed in terms of interrelated tasks

• Noted that market segmentation is a cornerstone of sound marketing strategy development