Designing an effective strategy is an important step in marketing. It helps a company identify its 
target consumers and position its products in their minds.  
 
By segmenting their market, companies can divide large, heterogeneous markets into smaller, 
homogeneous segments whose needs can then be met efficiently. This process of dividing the 
market into smaller consumer groups is called segmentation.  
 
Once a company has segmented its market, it has to decide whether or not to cater to the needs of 
one or many such groups. This decision is taken through a process called targeting. After 
segmentation and targeting, the final step in the STP framework is to position a product.  
 
 

 
 
Segmentation is the process of dividing a large audience into smaller groups in order to meet their 
demands effectively. 
 
Typically, the first four ​bases of segmentation​ are as follows: 
 

 
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Next,  you  learnt  about  ​benefit-based  segmentation​,  which  is  often  the  most  difficult  to  perform. 
You learnt that benefit-based segmentation involves: 
 

 
 
Moving on, the different bases for segmentation can be arranged as a ​2x2 matrix ​as shown below: 
 

 
 
You learnt about the industrial ​applications of the MAADS criteria​ through the example of 
BigBazaar and Foodhall. 
 

 
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Targeting is the next step in building an effective marketing strategy. You should always check 
whether your targeting strategy fulfils the following criteria or not.  
 

 
 
Targeting strategies can of different kinds, and each of them is used to target a different number of 
segments. Typically, there are ​three types of targeting strategies​: 
 

 
 
 

 
 
Once marketers have segmented their audience and have decided which targeting strategy to 
adopt, the next and final step is to ​position​ the product in the consumers’ minds.  
 
A product is positioned with respect to the competitors’ products in the consumers’ mind using a 
perceptual map. The steps involved in the design of a perceptual map are as follows:  
 

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You saw how a ​perceptual map​ is prepared while launching a new brand of beer (Bud Light) in the 
market. 
 

 
 
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