Target audience

Reconising target market

Mdes PowerPoint presentation 1: Recognising Target Market


Recognising the target market is of huge importance not only for a book but for any product launch whether commercially driven or not. Without taking into account the people who will be using your product at the beginning of production the end result will often lack focus and direction. Recognising your target audience will set you on a definite path with parameters to follow. When you recognise your target audience you can make your product much more relevant and therefore better.

No business or product can be all things to all people. Instead, you must reach specific customers and satisfy their particular needs. As an entrepreneur, you must identify those customers and understand as precisely as possible what they want.

Introduction

introduction



Marketers typically combine several variables to define a demographic profile. A demographic profile (often shortened to "a demographic") provides enough information about the typical member of this group to create a mental picture of this hypothetical aggregate. For example, a marketer might speak of the single, female, middle-class, age 18 to 24, college educated demographic.Marketing researchers typically have two objectives in this regard: first to determine what segments or subgroups exist in the overall population; and secondly to create a clear and complete picture of the characteristics of a typical member of each of these segments. Once these profiles are constructed, they can be used to develop a marketing strategy and marketing plan. The five types of demographics in marketing are age, gender, income level, race and ethnicity.

Demographics are the statistical characteristics of human populations, such as age and income, that are used by businesses to identify markets for their goods and services. Demographics are used to identify who your customers are (now and in the future), where they live, and how likely they are to purchase the product you are selling. By studying your customers and potential customers through demographics, one can identify changing needs in the marketplace and adjust to them. For the businessperson, identifying the demographic groups that will be most interested in your product can mean the difference between success and failure.

Demographics



Customer needs

Reconising target audience

You cannot produce a successful product without considering your customers needs. Consider all of the reasons why people might purchase your product or service. For example, if you’re opening a health club, what are the priorities of your clients. Do they want to take exercise classes, work out with a trainer, or play racquet sports with friends? Will you need to be open early in the morning to accommodate commuters who need to leave for work? Are there a lot of stay-at-home or work-from-home parents who need child care services in order to attend classes? Find out by talking to people in the local fitness industry and by quizzing friends or acquaintances who go to health clubs. Then you can design and market your club accordingly.

Thinking about opening a coffee shop? Stake out the area where you think you'd like to start the business. Notice the traffic, car and foot, at various times throughout the day to see how many people might frequent your shop. Do people dash in and out of shops, or would they linger? This might help you determine whether you should also sell small pastry items or full meals as well as coffee. Once you’ve considered the key demographic factors, you can begin to assemble a customer profile, a more focused statement that describes your target market in detail. Consult that profile when you make decisions about issues such as what products and services to offer or advertise, how much to charge for various products, and expansion plans

Key lifestyle attributes include the following:

Cultural backgroundReligious background and beliefsValuesPolitical convictionsHobbies/Recreational activitiesMusical preferencesReading preferencesEntertainment preferencesEating habitsTravel/vacation preferences

Other important demographic factors include age, sex, geographic location, occupation, size of family, and ages of the children in the family unit. In addition, analysis of these demographic characteristics is often undertaken in conjunction with so-called lifestyle factors. Studies of these factors can be very helpful in shaping marketing campaigns and other business efforts because analysis indicates a high correlation between certain lifestyle characteristics and their buying patterns

Demographics


Demographics are used to break the populas up into categories to better understand who they are selling to and what there marketing strategy might be.


Demographics/cohorts


A generational cohort has been defined as "the group of individuals (within some population definition) who experience the same event within the same time interval". The notion of a group of people bound together by the sharing of the experience of common historical events developed in the early 1920s. Today the concept has found its way into popular culture through well known phrases like "baby boomer" and "Generation X".The United Kingdom has a series of four national birth cohort studies, the first three spaced apart by 12 years: the 1946 National Survey of Health and Development, the 1958 National Child Development Study, the 1970 British Cohort Study, and the Millennium Cohort Study, begun much more recently in 2000. These have followed the lives of samples of people (typically beginning with around 17,000 in each study) for many years, and are still continuing. As the samples have been drawn in a nationally representative way, inferences can be drawn from these studies about the differences between four distinct generations of British people in terms of their health, education, attitudes, childbearing and employment patterns. The last three are run by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies.

The irony of market driven demographics is that after identifying a new market such as “generation x” (1990’s sub-cultre) it develops strategies to tap into it and then starts to control not only the market but also influences the demographic itself.


New product development


new product development (NPD) is the term used to describe the complete process of bringing a new product or service to market. There are two parallel paths involved in the NPD process: one involves the idea generation, product design and detail engineering; the other involves market research and marketing analysis. Companies typically see new product development as the first stage in generating and commercializing new products within the overall strategic process of product life cycle management used to maintain or grow their market share.

There are eight steps in NPD.

Idea GenerationIdea ScreeningConcept Development and TestingBusiness AnalysisBeta Testing and Market TestingTechnical ImplementationCommercialisationNew Product Pricing

These steps may be iterated as needed. Some steps may be eliminated. To reduce the time that the NPD process takes, many companies are completing several steps at the same time (referred to as concurrent engineering or time to market). Most industry leaders see new product development as a proactive process where resources are allocated to identify market changes and seize upon new product opportunities before they occur (in contrast to a reactive strategy in which nothing is done until problems occur or the competitor introduces an innovation). Many industry leaders see new product development as an ongoing process in which the entire organization is always looking for opportunities.



Marketing

Reconising target Market

Marketing is the process of performing market research, selling products and/or services to customers and promoting them via advertising to further enhance sales. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and creates value for their customers and for themselves.

Target markets are groups of people separated by distinguishable and noticeable aspects. Target markets can be separated into:

• geographic segmentations (their location)• demographic/socio-economic segmentation (gender, age, income occupation, education, sexual orientation, household size, and stage in the family life cycle)• psychographic segmentation (similar attitudes, values, and lifestyles)• behavioral segmentation (occasions, degree of loyalty)• product-related segmentation (relationship to a product)

Examples of Reaching Target Markets: The Oreo cookie is a popular cookie in the U.S., known for its two discs of chocolate with a white cream filling. The Double Stuf Oreo cookie is also marketed to U.S. consumers. However, Kraft has formulated a different version of the Oreo to target consumers in China. The Chinese version consists of four layers of long, thin biscuits coated in chocolate. Kraft CEO, Irene Rosenberg, trusts his executives who live and work in China to know what consumers would prefer in order to maximize their profits. In Germany, Kraft is appealing to the tastes and preferences of German consumers by creating dark chocolate products. It is also introducing premium instant coffee in Russia, which is a beverage that is popular to consumers.


Reconising target audienceExamples/not recognising target market

Here are a few examples of where a succesfull company with a good customer base expand into different markets with disastrous conciquences.

If you're one of the most popular beer brands in the world, it's a pretty safe bet that even your most loyal consumers would not be interested in buying bottled water from you. Case in point -- Coors Rocky Mountain Spring Water. Spring water from the Rocky Mountains is indeed used during the brewing process of some Coors products. However, when bottled alone, it's missing one key ingredient -- alcohol. Apparently Coors customers just weren't that into buying water when it wasn't enhanced by additional ingredients like barley and yeast.

The Brand Failures blog explains: In what must be one of the most bizarre brand extensions ever Colgate decided to use its name on a range of food products called Colgate's Kitchen Entrees. Needless to say, the products did not take off and never left U.S. soil. The idea must have been that consumers would eat their Colgate meal, then brush their teeth with Colgate toothpaste. The trouble was that for most people the name Colgate does not exactly get their taste buds tingling.


Reconising target audienceExamples/recognising target market

Apple claim not to have a “Target Market” but they clearly have been very successful in innovating markets and then translating there success into sales.An apple product is always very aesthetically pleasing they focus there marketing towards people obsessed with style and desirability. Apple is marketing to people who have a few characteristics.

1) Middle/Upper income folks who are willing to pay a bit more for a better user experience. paying 500 more for a computer is not a huge deal if you have a decent income. 2) People who like to have fun with technology. No other platform offers as many entry level tools (the whole iLife bunch and more). This includes people who like to shoot a lot of digital photos or video. It's the whole digital hub concept. People are starting to buy into it. 3) Music enthusiasts and fans ages 12-35. 4) Professionals in media and design.

Target audience

Education

Transcript of Target audience