Cite some reasons why majority of the companies prioritize the formulation of strategies for them to identify their target market?  Which do you think is the most important reason?

Principles Of Marketing
17th Edition
ISBN:9780134492513
Author:Kotler, Philip, Armstrong, Gary (gary M.)
Publisher:Kotler, Philip, Armstrong, Gary (gary M.)
Chapter1: Marketing: Creating Customer Value And Engagement
Section: Chapter Questions
Problem 1.1DQ
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“If you build it, they will come.”

(Source: https://articles.bplans.com/target-marketing/)  

That’s what the author believed when he was first starting out. He assumed that if he opened a business, customers would just show and no major marketing effort required. Other entrepreneurs take the complete opposite approach and treat marketing as if it’s the 1916 Battle of the Somme wherein they throw all of their resources in the general direction of their intended audience and hope something hits its mark.

The “if you build it they will come” approach is pretty risky. Just because it worked in Field of Dreams doesn’t mean there’s any reason at all to think that your ideal customers, the ones who both need your product or service and will pay for it are just going to magically find you and start showing up in droves with their dollars. There is a greater chance that Kevin Costner will show up at your door in a baseball uniform later today.

Target marketing is researching and understanding your prospective customers’ interests, hobbies, and needs so that you can focus your message and your marketing budget on the specific segment of the market that is most likely to purchase your product or service.

Identifying your target market is part of business planning, notice that it’s planning as an ongoing action not just writing a plan as a one-time event. Gathering information about your target market, like business planning, should not be an exercise you do once and then never revisit. For as long as you are in business, you will always need to be thinking about how to better understand your ideal prospective customers.

You can make some hypotheses, like that because of your price point, college students are less likely to buy them than people in their mid-thirties, or that people who live in areas where hiking and nature are easy to access are more likely to buy than people in dense urban areas.  Part of target marketing is identifying who your ideal customers are, and then testing your assumptions about them to make sure you’re not barking up the wrong tree.

 

You’ll want to be able to identify who your ideal customer is, where they live (or buy), what motivates them to make choices, and how they behave, or the steps they take in making a purchase.

Remember, identifying your target market is not something you do once and then check off a box. Up and running businesses should create systems to regularly ask your current customers feedback on what they like (and don’t like) about doing business with you.

 

Question:

Cite some reasons why majority of the companies prioritize the formulation of strategies for them to identify their target market? 

Which do you think is the most important reason?

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