Basic Marketing: A Global Managerial Approach

Perreault−McCarthy: Basic

Marketing: A

Global−Managerial

Approach, 14/e

3. Focusing Marketing
   Strategy with
   Segmentation and
   Positioning

Text © The McGraw−Hill

Companies, 2002

70 Chapter 3

Identifying a company’s market is an important but sticky issue. In general, a

marketis a group of potential customers with similar needs who are willing to

exchange something of value with sellers offering various goods and/or services—

that is, ways of satisfying those needs.

Marketing-oriented managers develop marketing mixes for specifictarget markets.

Getting the firm to focus on specific target markets is vital. As shown in Exhibit 3-3,

deciding on a specific target market involves a narrowing-down process—to get beyond

production-oriented mass market thinking. But some managers don’t understand this

narrowing-down process.

Some production-oriented managers get into trouble because they ignore the tough

part of defining markets. To make the narrowing-down process easier, they just describe

their markets in terms of productsthey sell. For example, producers and retailers of

What is a company’s
market?

Don’t just focus on the
product

The Olympus pocket camera competes directly with other 35-mm cameras, but it may also compete in a broader product-market against
Vivitar’s digital camera for kids or even Sony’s innovative Mavica, which stores digital pictures on a 3-inch CD-R.

All

customer

needs

Some

generic

market

One

broad

product-

market

Single

target

market

approach

Multiple

target

market

approach

Combined

target

market

approach

Narrowing down to

specific product-market

Homogeneous

(narrow)

product-

markets

Segmenting

into possible

target markets

Selecting

target

marketing

approach

Exhibit 3-3
Narrowing Down to Target
Markets