Staples Incorporated, By Founder Tom Stemberg

It is desirable to develop demographic and psychographic profiles of these likely consumers (the target audience).

Demographics make sense to me. My example is about the demographics of Forever 21 shop clothing. Their main customer focus on the big teen retailers from 18 to 24 years old, female and male fashion, young, active, and fashionable customer. The education level is College and completed. Their price strategy is reasonable and low budget

The Staples located in the Largo Mall is a good example of a business that embodies the target market characteristics. The mall is a great location for a business that is specialized in office products that are readily accessible to their target audience of other businesses. This particular Staples offers its target customers the convince of product accessibility because there are so many businesses located within the same parking lot of the business. Therefore, this Staples is directly reaching its target audience. The size of the business is appropriate for the location with an abundance of customer service representatives available to offer assistance to customers. Also, the Staples in the Largo Mall has limited competition because most

Characteristics such as income, age, behaviors, emotions, occupation, and location will be addressed as they pertain to the company’s target audience. The paper will then

Who are MM’s target customers? Are all segments equally attractive to MM? If yes, why? If not, why not? How do the different segments’ needs and expectations evolve over time?

Staples is a large enough company that despite negative economic conditions staples can still thrive. The United States is facing a state of stagnation. Despite heading towards a state of stagnation staples can aggressively pursue new markets and new areas to grow.

The Home Depot, Inc. has climbed its way up to being one of the world’s largest home improvement centers, one of the largest retailers in the United States, and rank in the top 100 in the Fortune 500 companies list provided by fortune.com. (Fortune 500, 2016) They operate 478 warehouse stores that sell thousands of items to customers and professionals. They have retail stores located throughout the United States, with stores in all 50 states, as well as in Mexico, Chile, and Canada. Their goal is to offer high levels of service, a broad selection of products, and have the most competitive prices. Home Depot was founded in 1978 by coworkers Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus. The two hatched a business plan, and after securing sufficient

2. List five examples of products that are commonly purchased as either business products or consumer products. How would the classification impact the marketing strategy? 1. Maintenance people are always going to need things repaired. Some people cannot repair things themselves or do not have the time. This will keep job for people and equipment being bought. 2. Materials people are going to always have a need for raw materials. People will need to produce these items keeping the market moving. 3. Clothing people are always in need of clothing through the season changes as well as the fashion trends. 4. Technology such as phones, cameras, mp3 players. These items are always upgrading and getting a new version. 5. Furniture styles are always changing on these items keeping stylist, builders, and manufactures in business.

Staples, Inc. is a "green" company, and ranked in the top 25 on the Green Power Partner list put out by the EPA (Pallavi, 2006). Nearly 3000 of its office products have at least some recycled content in them. Clearly, Staples has sustainability and the global village in mind. By using recycled content, Staples shows that it is committed to helping people live better lives and reducing the number of items that end up discarded in landfills each year. The paper the company sells and uses is environmentally friendly, and Staples is working on the creation of its own brand of products that are produced with raw materials that are green. The fulfillment center in Maryland is solar powered, and a store in California is also using solar power for at least part of its energy needs (Pallavi, 2006). Strategies to reduce power usage include putting all copiers in the store in "sleep mode" if they go unused for more than 15 minutes, which saves the company more than $1 million every year on its energy bills. That simple step also keeps 11 million pounds of harmful carbon monoxide out of the atmosphere (Dalkir & Warren-Boulton, 2003).

In 1986, Staple Incorporation opened their first and only store in Brighton, Massachusetts. Staples become the one-stop shop for office cleaning supplies, office supplies, technology, and break room items. Staples customers consist of large, small, new, and existing businesses. In 1992, Staples started to enter into the European marketplace. A few months after they become partners with Kingfisher and MAXI-Paper, later to buy them out in 1996. In 1993 they were able to open up their first store in the Untied Kingdom. On Staples 10 year anniversary, they become a Fortune 500 Company and the sixth company to generate sales over $3 billion in 10 years. In between 2000 and 2016, Staples opened up an eCommerce, in-store pack and ship services, tech support, print and copy services, and many ways to make

Individual consumers and small to medium sized businesses are the target customer segments of Staples and Office Depot. The two companies offer printing and copying services, computer hardware and software, school supplies, and general office supplies.

General Issue: which segments should the company target? How should the company and its products be positioned?

Relying purely on socio-economic and demographic data only provides a partial glimpse into the needs, preferences and wants of a given target market. Psychographic-based segmentation research is often used for determining how potential customers' self-assignment to groups, unique interests and preferences for retail products and services influence and often predict their purchasing behavior and long-term loyalty (Bearden, Teel, Durand, 1978). Psychographics is the study of how customers assign

In 1986, Tom Stermberg opened his first store in Brighton, Massachusetts, and in a few short years he built Staples into one of largest office supplies superstores in the United States. Stermberg used his background in the grocery market field to develop his office supply empire. He then used his business savvy to eliminate the middle man with big mark ups and cut them out with more affordable options. It was maneuvers like this that made Staples the sixth company in history to achieve three billion dollars in sales within 10 years of start–up (Staples, 2017).

There are some segmentation for their target market, such as young customer, young executive, executive and expatriate.