Strategic Marketing Basics

A market is a group of customers or potential customers.

 

Most markets are made up of buyers and consumers / users who generally differ one from each other in many ways: expectations and needs, purchasing and consumption behaviours... Decision criteria for choosing products and brands maybe quite diverse. Growing and maturing markets are generally particularly heterogeneous.

 

Market segmentation consists in splitting markets into sub-groups being as homogeneous as possible (members inside the group have commonalities) and differing as widely as possible from the other sub-groups. Sub-groups are called "market segments".

 

The objectives of a segmentation process are to identify groups of customers that can be treated specifically in the subsequent phases of the marketing approach (targeting and positioning) and to adapt marketing propositions and communication strategies as precisely as possible while making the whole approach economically profitable.