Marketing - buyers

Authors Avatar
I. Introduction

In a market, there are buyers, and these buyers are different in one way or another in most cases. These buyers can differ in needs, wants, location, buying behavior, and resources. To make the best marketing plan a marketer can come up with he must first find his niche or his target market. In order to market your product or service efficiently, it is imperative that you tailor your marketing and sales efforts to specifically reach the segment of population that will most likely buy your product or service. It is critical that before anything else; first determine or clearly identify your primary market. By doing so, the firm's energies and funds then can be spent more efficiently and in pursuit of profits for the company. If the company doesn't know who its customers are, how will it be able to assess whether it is meeting their needs? Since success depends on the firms being able to meet customers' needs and desires, it must know who its customers are, what they want, where they live and what they can afford. This is where finding the target market becomes important.

In finding the target market a company or marketer must go through 3 steps. The first and the most crucial process among the steps is market segmentation. Market segmentation by definition: "is the process of dividing the market into distinct groups of buyers with different needs, characteristics, or behavior who might require separate products or market mixes."

It is a business function wherein the marketer identifies the differences and similarities between certain groups of people, so he can divide the market into smaller groups thus coming up with smaller and better defined target market possibilities.

A marketer can segment the market by any number of single or a mix of fixed segmentation variables. Fixed Variables such as: geographic segmentation, demographic segmentation, psychographic segmentation and behavioral segmentation, are assessed, divided and mixed; the variables are analyzed together, separately, and in a number of different combinations to come up with the best mix for the most viable target group. But before going there, we must see first the importance of market segmentation.

II. Market Segmentation

It is in market segmentation where the marketer starts to choose the best way of selling their products, and the best people to sell to. This being mainly because of the fact, that not all consumers will have the same or equal appeal and interest to the organization's products and services. All buyers /consumers have their own specific needs and wants. Moreover, there are numerous consumers with various characteristics and they are scattered all across the country. Ideally organizations should cater to consumers specific wants and demands but this practice will use up too much of the company's profit for it to remain profitable. Not all companies can serve the entire market and company resources should be maximized by concentrating marketing resources on a well defined group rather than on individuals. This is especially important to small business' who can compete, and operate more profitably by serving a small defined market, rather competing with the big well funded firms on the open market. It is in cases like this, that market segmentation comes in, and plays a very important role. Aside from cases of small companies; any company, regardless of its size, must identify parts of the market where it can serve best, not have to compete directly with other companies, and use as little resources as possible. With this in mind, it is best to now take a look at the different variables of market segmentation which marketers use as a guide in segmenting possible target markets. The different variables for segmentation are the following:
Join now!


III. Variables to Segmentation

Geographic Segmentation:

In geographic segmentation, the market is divided on the basis of their location. They are divided in districts, vicinities, cities, states, regions and countries. A company can choose one of these geographic locations and concentrate on them or they could work on all of them but must consider some differences between these locations. The reason why companies work on various or on all locations are because people in different places have diverse needs and wants. For example, if an American company that sells canned goods decides to distribute their products ...

This is a preview of the whole essay