Market segmentation?

Question

Need a basic laymans explaination of what Market segmentation is. And no this isnt for homework or coursework :P lol

Cheers in advance

Answer 1

Market segmentation is to divide a market by a strategy directed at gaining a major portion of sales to a subgroup in a category, rather than a more limited share of purchases by all category users.

When you are tagerting a marketing or breaking a market into group that is marketing segmentation.

Target marketing can be the key to a small business’s success.

The beauty of target marketing is that it makes the promotion, pricing and distribution of your products and/or services easier and more cost-effective. Target marketing provides a focus to all of your marketing activities.

So if, for instance, I open a catering business offering catering services in the client’s home, instead of advertising with a newspaper insert that goes out to everyone, I could target my market with a direct mail campaign that went only to particular residents.

While market segmentation can be done in many ways, depending on how you want to slice up the pie, three of the most common types are:

* Geographic segmentation – based on location such as home addresses;

* Demographic segmentation – based on measurable statistics, such as age or income;

* Psychographic segmentation – based on lifestyle preferences, such as being urban dwellers or pet lovers.

If you’re interested in target marketing, the first step is to do the research that will help you define and zero in on your target market.

Answer 2

Marketing segmentation involves messaging different segments (parts) of the marketplace differently.

So for instance a beauty company such as Estee Lauder will send emails and put print advertisements in the glossy magazines for anti-wrinkle creams that talk to the 40+ crowd. You would segment your email list by age and send everyone over 40 an ad for these products. You would put the ad for these products in Redbook, More, Ladies' Home Journal, where the over 40 crowd are the majority of the readership.

You would send your younger demographic an ad for lipgloss with a young, hot star like Jessica Alba in the ad.

This is the concept at the most basic level.

Answer 3

Market segmentation is the breaking up of a single, coherent market for a product (or service) into 2 or more (usually similar) markets with a variation of the product or service offered.
An easy example is as follows:
For many years, Coca Cola just made one type of Cola, now referred to as Classic Coke. There was one Cola market. Then as people became aware of the unhealthy effect of high sugar intake, Coca Cola created Diet Coke. It segmented the cola market into the market for classic Coke and its followers on one side, and the Diet coke for the more health conscious cola drinkers on the other. As a result of market segmentation it sells more Coke overall now then it would have otherwise - because there are some health conscious consumers that would not buy classic coke if that was the only cola available.

Answer 4

Segmantation is when you take a market for say cars and then divide that market into small chunks, such as age; older people/younger people, or gender; women/men, they like different cars, geographic location; people in the north drive large cars, and the south small cars, income levels; rich people/poor people. your income determines whether you can a afford a type of car etc... there are so many ways to choose a small part of the market that you want to market to. You take that small segment and then the purpose is to get a product that those people in the segment will want. This involves market research to work this out. An example of a segment will be guys in the north located in city centres are wealthy and have a passion for fast cars. they like different colours especially red and they like coupes, they have the money to buy it so that is the segment, then design all your marketing and product specifications around that market, so for example the things that these type of people like will be in your advertising so as to attract them to the product. The whole purpose is to identify people that will like the product and to give them what they want by modifying the product and then after that to design your advertising etc to get in touch with these people to sell it. There are unlimitless market segments a product can tap into.

Answer 5

Well, the very basic answer would be that in order to successfully promote your service/product, you need to know who you're trying to sell it to. Market segmentation is the act of defining groups to whom a product would be appealing - for example, you're not going to advertise nappies and baby products in a senior citizen's travel magazine. Markets are segmented in various ways - for example age (as mentioned), socio-economic group, gender, life-cycle (ie parents, elderly, school age) etc etc.

Answer 6

Market segmentation is when you divide your market into groups in which you can categorize them in different kinds. For example, you can divide them according to demographics. It is up to you on how you would segment your market. I hope this answers your question.

Answer 7

This shall mean market allocation of fund in different sectors.