Retail Business Analysis

Different ways to segment a market would be demographics, geographics, psychographics, and behavioral. I think that it makes more sense to focus on just one segment rather than use more than one it would be more successful for the company.

NIKE Inc. has been the worldwide leader of athletic shoe sales for many years now. The company’s successful brand image combined competition and enablement for the competitive, athletic user. Nike has to modify their brand to a focus of excitement and freedom and not just competitiveness. By collecting and studying an assortment of material we could be able to understand where NIKE is currently placed in the athletic shoe industry compared to their competition, and how they will be able to adjust their brand focus so it can be more effective in the future. These adjustments can help NIKE reach the more casual group of urban runners and ultimately increase the sales forecasts, while still controlling a percentage of the market for athletic shoes.

Demographic Segmentation fragments the market into categories according to different demographic factors, usually with regards to the wants and needs of multiple consumer groups. The

Customers make purchasing decisions based on the information they have among products and the values of goods a company offers. For that reason, companies have to promote their products to increase products awareness. In order to achieve organizational goals, companies must understand the market’s needs to ensure the success of their businesses. Such information can be gained through research. The industry that will form the basis of this paper is Western Canadian Shoe Association. The three brands under study are Reebok, Adidas, and Nike.

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

Celebrity endorsement is one of the most popular ways to promote a product in today’s market. Consumers make a purchase based on the price of the product, its quality, and the necessity to own the good. What can ultimately influence the demand of a product is to have a celebrity endorse a certain brand. Michael Jordan is considered arguably the greatest basketball players of all-time. However he only gained global recognition after his involvement with Nike and Air Jordan.

The division of a market into various subdivision determined by lifestyle, social class, personality and characteristics is psychographic segmentation. Behavioural segmentation separates a market under classifications depending on consumer knowledge, attitudes, use or responses to a good or services. For example, life style and attitudes plays one of the important parts of consumer purchasing a drink from Boost Juice. The reason is consumer can occasionally purchase it anytime during the day because they like to live in a healthy life style and also drink what is good for them. Furthermore these segmentation helps Boost Juice to identify their specific target consumers for their

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).

At the end of 2012, Costco was a successful business, but there are some issues that they would need to deal with. These issues mainly arise from their previous successful ventures as a warehouse wholesale company. The first issue is that Costco has competitors that can actually be and are a threat to their success. Competition allows a company to improve itself and prove its prowess to its customers. However, when a competitor is able to provide the service at a much reduced cost, problems will arise. As for the second issue, it seems that Costco’s efforts to become an international company are moving slowly. They have not reached a point where their US and Canadian warehouses provide a backbone for their finances. Costco’s third issue is that their finances are too reliant on acquiring new members and not on selling their products. If they cannot keep acquiring new members at a steady rate, their financial infrastructure could suffer.

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

The industry I have chosen for my paper is the Specialty retail industry or the clothing industry which has the SIC code of 5651. This industry consists of companies that are primarily in the business of clothing and accessories for men, women and children. These companies include unisex clothing stores and jeans stores for all ages instead of stores aimed at a particular age group or sex.

A market segment is a group of consumers sharing similar wants and needs. Fashion companies use different features and consumer responses to segment customer markets (Easey, 2011). They divide the market segment by family size and age variables. Demographic variables help them to differentiate and measure customer needs (Czinkota and Ronkainen, 2012). For instance, Primark segments the market in Western Europe because customers there have different tastes and preferences from those in other parts of Europe (Bradley, 2014).

With psychographic segmentation, we use psychology and demographics to better understand consumers. Buyers are divided into different groups on the basis of psychological/personality traits, lifestyle

Similarly (Tynan and Drayton, 1987) states that the aim of market segmentation is to identify market segments, or individual sets of customers, which would form targets for the company’s future marketing plans. The elements used to separate customers into segments can include: age, gender, occupation, income, life stage, amongst others.

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.