What customers buy

A description of your customers in terms of their geography, profiles, lifestyles,

and personalities tells you a lot about them. To begin to understand how custom-
ers make choices in the marketplace you compete in, you need to consider not only
who they are but also what they buy.

A description of customers based on what they buy enables you to view them from
a perspective that you’re very familiar with: your own products and services. After
you come up with market segments based on what your customers purchase, you
can address the needs of each group by making changes in the following aspects
of your product or service:

»» Features and add-ons

»» Packaging
»» Pricing
»» Delivery options
A good way to start thinking about these things is to picture your firm’s offering
lined up in a labor hiring hall: What is it being “hired” to do for the buyer? Just
what reason drives the buy decision, and what variables influence whether you or
the other guy gets chosen?

What can your product do?

Features refer to all the specifications and characteristics of a product or service —
things that you often find listed in a product brochure, a user manual, or the
company website. When you group customers based on the product features they
look for, the customers themselves turn out to have a great deal in common. Their
similarities include

»» How much they use the product (light, moderate, heavy)

»» How well they use the product (novice, intermediate, expert)
»» What they do with the product (recreation, education, business)
»» What kind of customers they are (advisor, reseller, user)
Spirit Airlines is a player in the so-called no-frills segment of the airline business.
The company caters to people who travel relatively short distances and who often
have to pay for travel out of their own pockets — and are very conscience of price
(the so-called leisure segment of the market). You can find rock-bottom ticket
prices to fly Spirit, but don’t expect a seat assignment in advance, free checked

CHAPTER 6 Slicing and Dicing Markets 103