Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Market segmentation is the next step after target marketing - segmentation is more specific targeting.

For example, you want to sell a new smartphone. Your target are people who are looking to buy a new smartphone. Your first question is: But there are millions of people who fit this description, how can one message possibly apply to all of them? That's where segmentation comes in: you need to segment your target audience in order to customize the marketing message to be relevant to that segment. Segmentation would include: gender, location, current phone, current provider, age, and so on.

Segmentation is the division of your target audience which allows you to craft many relevant messages to many groups, instead of one generic message to a single group.

Market segmentation is how one would differentiate between potential customers by some category. Marketers look for ways to look at groups of potential customers and understand how they are the same/act the same/buy for the same reasons, and how they are different than some other group of customers. Note - different marketers may segment the same group of potential customers differently, as in most cases there are not standards of how to segment.

target market are which of these market segments you decide to target.