Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Lyn

Welcome to KHE! Sorry to hear you feel like you don't understand marketing. Marketing is simply the practice of helping people who want or need something, get together with people who have that something to sell.

You'll find lots of other descriptions like "Marketing is the management process, which identifies, anticipates and supplies customer requirements efficiently and profitably" and there isn't anything wrong with that statement, but it makes it all sound complicated, when really it isn't.

Just envisage the old style town market where buyers met sellers in the open air, remember there's a few new tools like TV, radio and the internet, and a whole new vocabulary, and you'll be fine.

OK, your assignment talks about Analyzing a Plan - were you given any particular plan to analyze? Where can we find that plan - a link would be useful? It seems like it's up to you to select a plan, or at least, "choose a consumer or business-to-business product; whichever is preferred" - was there maybe a list of plans to choose from? Or were you supposed to go off and find one?

Let's say you've got a plan to Analyze... And it's a single-product marketing plan like they asked. Now, think about the various potential buyers for that product, and group them into clusters or "segments" - where they are grouped by some common attribute. This is just like triage... So look at all the people who might be customers and group them by their needs, or by their demographics, or some other attribute - the only rule on segmentation is that the segments should make sense to you. Sense, because grouping them makes it easier to communicate with them, to sell to them, to deliver to them, or some other reason.

For example, it might make sense to group people into segments by the language they use, the place where they live, how the buy (internet or real Mall) etc. Now describe the common attributes of those people in each segment, and analyse it by their demographics, psychographics, benefits sought, usage rate, and geography.

That's the first part done.

Now look at the segments you just described, and figure out which two would be best to approach from some perspective, maybe because:

- it's a huge segment with lots of people in it
- it's going to be easy to persuade this segment to buy
- this segment is already looking for this product
- the segment has plenty of money and will pay a price that is more profitable to the seller

Just explain your rationale for selecting those two segments, and your assignment is done.

Does that help? Don't close the question just yet - there are bound to be other answers, so leave it at least 48 hours.

ChrisB

Lyn

Great effort.

I think your content is pretty good, although the bullet-point presentation is unhelpful. Can't show it here, but a better approach would be a table presentation with segments across the top, and the segmentation types (Demographic, Psychographic, Benefits sought, Usage rate. and Geography down one side. that way, you can start to see across the segments where the differences are. And where they aren’t. Which is why you wanted to do the segmentation in the first place, right? Segments that have no differences usually either aren’t very targetable, or should be merged.

I would lose the“General Population” segment, because that isn’t easily targetable, and threatens to include the other three segments. The question actually asked for two segments, and I think you could eliminate the student segment on the basis the other two are more targetable and more likely to need the product. It would be a rare and unfortunate student that thought they had symptoms of osteo-arthritis.

I renamed Elderly to Aging because the former name will win you no friends in the 50-70 years old category.

You could add an additional benefit in the Athlete category – recovery after exertion and injury.

I think you could do far more with the demographics, by looking up the statistical data to indicate how many people are in the segment. Approximately.

You could definitely put your medical training to use in the usage section. Look at the daily dosage per person (xx capsules/day = however many bottles or $$ per year) which is more meaningful than light or heavy usage.

Looking back at the referenced website there are several strengths or versions of the product – which one suits which segment, if applicable?

Tighten your geographic definition under the Aging group as you said in the demographic section that cold climates make one more prone. That should follow through - e.g. colder, Northern states, plus Canada and Alaska. And I include guiess you should also states where older people tend to congregate in their retirement.

I suspect your age range for professional athletes is terribly generous. I reckon in most sports 18-35 just about covers it. Not too many 35+ tennis, football, basketball, hockey or swimming stars out there. Obviously some sports are different (golf, lawn bowls, croquet, deck quoits) but if you watch the sports channel for a couple days I think you’ll find 90%+ are in that 18-35 group.

I think you've selected the right segment to target. The Aging market will be a growth segment for the next decade and well beyond. I also suspect there’s far more Aging people than professional athletes, and the athletes will get old anyway so you’ll get them all in the end.

Hope that helps.

ChrisB