Group Project- Target Market PDF

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Target Market a. Describe the current target market(s) for the product. What segmentation variables are used to divide the market? b. What type of targeting strategy is used? (undifferentiated, concentrated, differentiated) c. Research additional information about this (these) target markets that would be helpful in improving the marketing mix. A business librarian may be useful in finding appropriate sources of information.

Kerr, C. (2017, October 31). Nintendo survey reveals who's purchasing the Switch. Gamasutra. Retrieved April 25, 2018, from https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/308679/Nintendo_survey_reveals_whos_purchas ing_the_Switch.php Arps, B. (2018, February 28). Studies Show Female Gamers Are On The Rise - But There's Still A Major Problem. Yahoo Lifestyle. Retrieved April 28, 2018, from https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/studies-show-female-gamers-rise-013500188.html J. (2017, February 14). Nintendo's Market Strategy and the Problem with the Switch. Game Over Thirty. Retrieved April 29, 2018, from http://gameoverthirty.com/nintendos-marketstrategy-and-the-problem-with-the-switch/

Target Market The Nintendo Switch being the predecessor to the very underperforming Nintendo Wii U, is of course expected to surpass it. Nintendo planned to change up the marketing mix in order to promote to better audiences. The Target market for the Switch is definitely a unique one that deserves special consideration when it comes to creating a marketing plan because it is a special product which creates an entirely new market. What Nintendo has done is focus on demographic segmentation because it is easy for them to conduct a survey on the purchasers, or to collect data from product registration. In terms of actuality what Nintendo did was email a questionnaire to 600,000 switch customers to which 60,000 replied (Kerr, 2017). The Target Market for the Switch is of course Gamers but when it is broken down into segments it is demographically variably by gender, and age. Nintendo aims to get people of a certain age group to purchase their new gaming device. They market more towards the age group of 10-19 and 19-24, but actually have more of their Switch customers being in the 25-34 age group sitting at 43%. The 19-24 age group actually takes up about 20% of its customers (Kerr, 2017). Speaking in terms of gender, games and gaming technology are generally designed, produced, and marketed towards the Males but the industry is seeing a rise in female gamers. In fact, 65% of women aged 10 to 65 in the United States play mobile games, it has also been found that women make up half of mobile gamers (Arps, 2018). With that being said companies should find ways to market more towards women as well as men in order to find ways to incorporate them more into the gaming atmosphere. Specifically speaking for Nintendo’s Switch of the 60,000 that replied to the questionnaire, 86% identify as men while 11% identify as women

leaving the other 3% of buyers identified as other (Kerr). This shows that most women do not have the desire to play video games on the console. Possibly because they don’t actually know about the capabilities of the Nintendo Switch, being that it is a brand-new type of gaming system which offers handheld and console means of entertainment, which of course gives the system its own special type of market for gamers who desire, or both capabilities. Nintendo somewhat employs a marketing strategy of Differentiated targeting strategy. This is partly because they pursue customers in a very particular segment. As stated they pursue gaming consumers of all kinds. Because of this they are directly competing with companies like Sony (PlayStation 4) and Microsoft (Xbox One) trying to have the number one gaming console on the market. The main disadvantage that Nintendo has in this competition is that the switch lacks support from third party game developers to create AAA (“triple A”) games that PlayStation and Xbox have, so it makes it hard for them to contend in this battle (J., 2017). What Nintendo should do in terms of promotion is attempt to broaden their audiences by creating ways advertise to more women who are taking up a large percentage of consumers in this target market. Specially speaking in terms of mobile gamers where women take up more than half of that market, it is important that they get more women consumers to buy their products. The other thing Nintendo needs to do in order to improve the marketing mix is switch up their target market a bit. The Switch is targeted towards leisure and recreational gamers. If they want to see a large improvement in numbers they need to target Hardcore and E-sports Gamers. The Gaming world is starting to become more and more competitive and for Nintendo to be able to break into the world of competitive gaming they need to appeal more to those types of gamers,

in order to do that they must receive more support from gaming developers that create the big name titles that attract these types of gamers....