Niche Marketing

* Market segment: Group of consumers who respond in a similar way to a given set of marketing efforts.

Niche Markets: Reach people in a space where they’re already comfortable and spending their time. By choosing the right platforms and groups, you can invest your time in developing relationships with exactly the right markets, such as Facebook groups who all like American cuisine or something similar.

Target Market – a specific group of customers on whom an organization focuses its marketing efforts.

A marketing strategy provides a big picture of what a firm can do in a specific market. When creating a marketing strategy, a firm must identify a target market and a related marketing mix. A target market is "a group of similar customers to whom a firm wishes to appeal," and a marketing mix is "the controllable variables the company puts together to satisfy this target group." (Perrault and McCarthy 36) Focusing on specific target customers can help a firm develop a marketing mix that satisfies those customers ' specific needs better than another firm, making a firm less likely to face direct competitors.

Niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. The market niche defines the product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact. It is also a small market segment

A niche product is made and marketed for use in a small capacity and specialized, but very profitable. Niche strategy targeting the most intensely involved super-premium consumers who look for superior skin care products.

In order to market the product into the market successfully, marketers need to have some marketing strategy to enter the desired market and make profit. Market segmentation is the process of dividing a market into subsets of consumers with common needs or characteristics (Schiffman et al., 2011). Understanding the market size and segmentation is valuable, but the keys to effective targeting is to know just how valuable specific consumer groups are, and being able to quantify the impact of consumer trends ( Berry, 1999).

In simple terms, niche (marketing) can be defined as fulfilling the needs of a tightly-defined market segment (Kotler and Keller 2006).

This process helps a firm or organisation in focusing its marketing effort towards a specific segment or a group of segments. Depending on the product, organisational goals, the size of the firm and the marketing resources available a firm may target only one ‘niche’ segment or alternatively focus on several related segments. Another method can be to start with one segment and add more when business grows successfully. Large companies often target all market segments and try to serve them by offering a large variety of products to suit all their needs, wants and demands.

The new small entrants are coming out with completely new idea which eats out of the existing segment of buyers. For an example, Heelying Shoes’ unique shoe with imbedded and detachable wheel turned out to be a success. They sold 1 million pairs in the first year of operations.

become well known as a company that enables sellers to sell their products on its website as well

After segmenting the market there is a need to narrow down to a specific target, this achieved through target marketing, which breaks down the clientele into primary, secondary and tertiary categories (Dibb & Simkin 1996). From the empty seats in the restaurant it could be true that City Grill employs niche marketing to reach its target group. Niche market in simple terms is selecting a small group within a large group. By offering steak as their main delicacy they have specialized in a small group or a niche in the extensive restaurant industry.

product features for this audience. The company was beginning to develop real traction in this

It may be that you will only be competing directly against some of these because you will be targeting a particular segment of the market or offering services which are hard to find elsewhere”( Market Research- Estimating Demand, 2012).

According to Phillip Kotler, a niche is a narrowly defined customer group. Niche markets primarily consist of market segments within the larger market place who have similar demographic, psychographic, buying behavior and/or lifestyle characterics. The Fenix Group started with two entrepreneurs, Anthony Keung (Chinese) and Masaaki Ogino (Japanese) who shared the same business philosophy, which is aiming at niche markets, that most times are left untouched or under-served.