Consumer driven marketing strategy

COURSE #6

Daniela Ionita,
Associate Professor - Marketing Department
Objectives
 Define the major steps in designing a customer-
driven marketing strategy: segmentation,
targeting, differentiation and positioning
 Discuss the major bases for segmenting
consumer and business markets
Explain how companies identify and select a
targeting strategy
 Describe how companies differentiate and
position their products
Designing a customer-driven marketing
strategy
Companies recognize they cannot appeal to all buyers or at least not to all
buyers in the same way.

Mass marketing (shotgun approach) -> target marketing (rifle approach)

Segmenting consumer markets
Market segmentation requires dividing a market into
smaller segments with distinct needs, characteristics,
or behaviors that might require separate marketing
strategies or mixes.

Geographi Demograp
c segm hic segm

Psychograp Behavioral
hic segm segm
U1: Urban Uptown are home to the nation's wealthiest urban consumers. Members of this
social group tend to be upscale to wealthy, mostly without kids. Although this group is
diverse in terms of housing styles, residents share an upscale urban perspective that's
reflected in their shopping behaviors and activities. Urban Uptown consumers tend to
frequent the arts, shop at exclusive retailers, drive luxury imports, travel abroad, and spend
heavily on computer and wireless technology.
T4 Rustic Living represent the nation's most isolated towns and rural villages. They have
relatively modest incomes, aging homes, and blue-collar occupations. Many of the
residents, a mix of young singles and seniors, are unmarried, and they've watched scores of
their neighbors migrate to the city. In their remote communities, these consumers spend
their leisure time in such traditional small-town activities as fishing and hunting, attending
social activities at the local church and veterans club, and enjoying country music and car
racing
Requirements for effective segmentation

MEASURABLE ACCESSIBLE SUBSTANTIAL

• the size, purchasing power, and • the market segments can be • the market segments are large
profiles of the segments can be effectively reached and served. or profitable enough to serve
measured

DIFFERENTIABLE
• the segments are conceptually
distinguishable and respond
differently to different
marketing mix elements and
programs
ACTIONABLE
• effective programs can be
designed for attracting and
serving the segments.
Market targeting – evaluating market
segments
A target market is a set of buyers who
share common needs or characteristics
that the company decides to serve.

Segment size and growth

Segment structural attractiveness
Company objectives and resources
 Selecting target markets segments
A market-coverage A market-coverage A market-coverage Tailoring products
strategy in which a strategy in which a strategy in which a and marketing
firm decides to firm decides to firm goes after a programs to the
ignore market target several large share of one needs and wants of
segment diff. and market segments or a few segments specific individuals
go after the whole and designs or niches. and local customer
market with one separate offers for segments.
offer. each.
Choosing a targeting strategy
...depends on:
• Firm’s resources
• Degree of product variability
• Product life-cycle
• Market variability
• Competitors’ marketing strategies
Designing a customer-driven marketing
strategy
Product position is the way
the product is defined by
consumers on important
attributes – the place the
product occupies in
consumers’minds relative to
competing products.
 Perceptual positioning maps

Consumers position products

with or w/o the help of
marketers -> plan!
Spidergram analysis
The key steps are as follows:
Identify a set of competing
brands.
Identify important attributes that
consumers use when choosing
between brands, using qualitative
research (e.g. group discussions).
Conduct quantitative marketing
research in which consumers:
a) rate the importance of each
attribute in their choice between
brands on a 10-point scale
b) score each brand on all key
attributes on a 10-point scale.
Plot brands on a spidergram.
Choosing a differentiation and positioning
strategy
Only a few years ago, things weren’t so easy for
Staples – or for its customers. The ratio of customer
complaints to compliments was running a dreadful
eight to one at Staples stores. Weeks of focus
1. Identifying a set of possible groups produced an answer: Customers wanted an
easier shopping experience. That simple revelation
competitive advantages to has resulted in one of the most successful marketing
campaigns in recent history built around the now-
build a position familiar „Staples. That was easy” tagline. But
Staples’ positioning turnaround took a lot more than
2. Choosing the right simply bombarding customers with a new slogan.
Before it could promise customers a simplified
competitive advantages shopping experience, Staples had to actually deliver
one.
3. Selecting an overall First, it had to live the slogan. So, for more than a
year, Staples worked to revamp the customer
positioning strategy experience. It remodeled its stores, streamlined its
inventory, retrained employees, and even simplified
communicating its new positioning to customers.
4. Communicating and The “Staples. That was easy” repositioning

delivering the chosen
position to the market
campaign has met with striking success, helping to
make Staples the runaway leader in office retail. No
doubt about it, clever marketing helped. But
marketing promises count for little if they are not
backed by the reality of the customer experience.
Identifying a set of possible competitive
advantages to differentiate along the lines of:

Product (features, performance, style and design)

Services (extraordinary customer service, speedy,
convenient, or careful delivery)
Channels (coverage, expertise, performance)

People (competent, courteous, friendly)

Image (strong, distinctive)

Choosing the right competitive advantage

IMPORTANT DISTINCTIVE SUPERIOR

(delivers a highly (competitors do not (to other ways that
valued benefit) offer the difference) customers might obtain
the same benefit)

PREEMPTIVE AFFORDABLE
COMMUNICABLE (competitors (buyers can afford
(visible to buyers) cannot easily copy to pay the
the difference) difference)

PROFITABLE
 Selecting an overall positioning strategy

Value
proposition is
the full mix of
benefits upon
which a brand
is positioned.
Communicating chosen position to the
market

Positioning statement summarizes company or brand positioning

using this form: To (target segment and need) our (brand) is
(concept) that (point of difference)

Positioning Statement Example

To young, active soft- For drivers who
drink consumers with value auto
little time for sleep, performance, BMW
Mountain Dew is the provides luxury
soft drink that gives vehicle that deliver
you energy because it joy through German
has the most caffeine. engineering.