Market Segmentation

It is crucial for a business to know where their customers come from in order to select the best location for the store. Choosing the best geographic area can help in the success of the business or the failure of the business. This is why Trader Joe’s has particular criteria when choosing new store locations. Trader Joe’s is aware who their target consumer is and utilizes the data they receive to place their locations in the areas that will benefit in the growth of the organization.

By using Marketing strategy, organizations concentrate their resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and maintain a competitive advantage in its market (Wickipedia, pg1).Market segmentation is the process companies use to divide their market into groups of buyers and establish marketing tailored to individual groups. Market targeting is the process of actually choosing the market which poses the greatest profitability. Positioning involves product placement and helps marketers highlight their product over a competitor. The

International market segmentation is the dividing of market into segments, this allow marketers to effectively determine whether business can thrive in a particular area. Segmentation is based on four factor namely geographical, psychographic, demographic and lastly behavioral segmentation. Geographical segmentation refers to grouping markets geographically such as nations, states or cities. Psychographic segmentation is the dividing of buyers into groups based on lifestyle or social class/status. Demographic segmentation uses factors like age, gender, occupation and etc to separate markets into groups. Last but not least, behavioral segmentation, this kind of segmentation divides buyer into groups by their knowledge about particular

According to Horner and Swarbrooke (2005: 39), Segmentation may be defined as the process of dividing a whole market into subgroups or segments for marketing management purposes. Market segmentation is the division of the overall market for a service into various categories with common characteristics. In response to different segments, organisations facilitate the available resources to achieve greater efficiency, in order to satisfy specific needs of customers.

Additionally to the Market segmentation, many retailers and businesses use the segmentation as a marketing strategy and a factor when determining such as the location of a store, or the products that are going to be sold. Some of the strategic methods that are well known and utilized by many businesses are the Geographic, Demographic, Psychographic, and the Behavioral segmentation. I will focus more on the Geographic segmentation which creates data from the consumer's zip codes, neighborhood population and household income, and much more. Overall every retailer's focus is to have a successful business, and when doing that you must know who you are targeting and undergo research about those consumers who will be purchasing your products. This

Geographic segmentation is when you focus on a group of consumers due to their location (Baines and Fill, 2014) and is important for this particular product, as it is only available in a few

Market segmentation: The process of dividing a market into distinct groups of buyers who might require separate production or marketing mixes (Wells, Burnett, & Moriarty, 2006).

Market segmentation is a marketing strategy that involves dividing a broad target market into subsets of consumers who have common needs and applications

Geographic – According to Kotler and Keller (2012), geographical segmentation involves dividing the market into smaller geographical units like regions, states, nations or neighborhoods. For PepsiCo, its market is not highly geographically segmented as people from any geographical unit can purchase its products. The company markets and sells its products both domestically and internationally through its six recognized segments or regions including: Frito-Lay North America, Quaker Foods North America, North America Beverages, Latin America, Europe and Sib-Saharan Africa, and Asia, Middle East and North Africa regions. While the company targets both urban and rural areas, it makes more sales in big cities that are densely populated.

(B) We used a combination of three market segmentation variables using two different approaches. We chose these variables because we feel that they are the best choices for differentiating between market segments. The first thing we did was use the Geographic approach to limit our scope. Using the Regional variable to divide Canada into provinces, we decided to limit our market to that of Newfoundland and Labrador; as a new start-up, it makes sense to begin small with a familiar market with the potential for growth. Then, using Market Density, we determined that since almost 40% of Newfoundland and Labrador’s population lives in St. John’s (196,965 out of 514,540), we would limit our market to that of the Avalon Peninsula, with potential for

cross-national approach to market segmentation that can be utilized in guiding the development of global marketing strategies. It is always important to understand the market segmentation for doing business successfully. Product positioning has also been a vital part of marketing since most companies started to appreciate the relevance of having control of their designated image. Additionally, it is also a form of influencing consumer purchase choice and perception as well as to meet the set cooperate sales goals.

Cluster analysis is widely used in the marketing area, mostly while dealing with multidimensional data retrieved from surveys and test panel. Clustering is generally used to segment the consumers into market groups or clusters in order to understand the behaviors and relationships between different clusters of consumers and/or potential customers.

Market segmentation is an approach used by a company to select their target market and provide data for a marketing plan. “Market segmentation consist of a two-step process; naming broad product markets and segmenting these broad products-markets in order to select target markets and develop suitable marketing mixes” (Perreault, Cannon, & McCarthy, 2014, p.97). There are 4 categories pertaining to market segmentation; behavioral, geographic, demographic, and behavioral.

The process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the main purpose of selling that product or service is known as marketing. The science of choosing target markets through market segmentation and analysis, and understanding consumer behavior while providing superior customer value to the customers is termed as Marketing Management. It can be looked at as one of the most important of the organizational functions and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering the value to their customers or potential customers, and a customer relationship management that benefits the organization in a variety of ways.

For any business to run successfully, understanding its customers is the key. Especially for local or small businesses, it is very hard to concentrate and grab more customers because of the high competition power from large businesses. In such case, geographical targeting of customers can really be of great help as they can tell various interests about the customers which can be later on required for segmentation of the customer.