Target Market Selection and Positioning PDF

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Target Market Selection and Positioning...

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Target Market Selection and Positioning Many choices and concerns include retailing. We look at the challenges of choosing a target group and the definition of retail positioning in this segment. Selecting a Target Market In designing a retail plan, the first step is to identify a target market and explain it in depth. Even the best-conceived shopping idea is nothing without consumers but relying on customers is the driving philosophy of successful retail firms. This focus includes identifying expectations and needs, understanding consumer tastes, evaluating behaviour, and determining how to make the intended customer appeal to all the aspects of the retail concept. Look at every mall or shopping area, and you can see the client has to pick from a varied range of retail offers. This gives retailers a challenge. It is no longer enough to cater to consumers; in order to promote loyalty, the retailer now needs to interest, connect, and entertain customers. Why is it that we identify target markets? Geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioural definitions are the most general. These aspects are analysed by retailers and their retail mix is modified accordingly. To decide where new restaurants can be located and what formats to sell, McDonald's and Subway look at demographics-population, family, and age characteristics. Retailers like Canadian Tire look at the patterns and desires of customers and change their product ranges and composition of stores to meet consumer needs. In order to adapt to customer behaviour, Staples and Customers Drug Mart have changed their store hours; many now tend to buy and accept orders in the evening after working through the day. Some stores, in fact, are open 24 hours a day. Retail Positioning Much as packaged goods advertisers are positioning their offerings to separate themselves from rivals, so do retailers. Harry Rosen is for instance, a high-end men's wear retailer. For Harry Rosen to begin wearing lower-quality, low-priced suits would be a mistake in times of recession. Larry Rosen, CEO and Chairman of Harry Rosen Inc. and son of Harry Rosen's founder, says, "The consumer who is accustomed to our product's consistency and calibre is not looking for a cheaper product." Perhaps this year he'll purchase somewhat fewer, so it's not about reducing efficiency. "It's about sticking to your guns, about who you are." A clear knowledge of your clients and their buying habits is the courage to be able to do that. Shopper Marketing Marketing for shoppers is a hot marketing trend today. In multiple platforms and formats, it is a discipline structured to consider how customers function as shoppers. Shopper-marketing activities thus spread far beyond the shop, to the location and time where a buyer first thinks about buying a product. That may be at the gym on a treadmill, reading a magazine at home, or

in the car while commuting to work. This suggests that shopper marketing is a multi-channel practise by definition that makes use of mass media, digital media, direct marketing, allegiance, promotion of commerce, and countless other marketing strategies. Underneath it all is an environment that is essentially unfamiliar to conventional advertisers, whose attention has been on identifying consumers nearly entirely, i.e. the purchase of products and services. Understanding shoppers, that is, customers as they are in the buying process, is what has been overlooked. The marketing of shoppers is new to Canada, but it is important to distinguish between knowing shoppers. Retailing Mix In retail, the marketing combination, or the 4 Ps (product, price, location, and promotion), is used only as it is in other industries, but with certain special considerations. We look at the retailing mix in this segment, which includes aspects of product and service, retail pricing, physical position variables, and communications, as seen. Both of these aspects of the mix concentrate on the customer. In retail, it is often said that the customer is sovereign, and it is a winning idea for effective retailing to handle customers that way. The location of a retail store must be compatible with the retail mix of the store. It is important to organise the four components so that they provide a consistent position to customers. For starters, Winners is placed at a bargain price as a store supplying upscale designer apparel. If rates rose unexpectedly and buyers came to the realisation that they were not having a discount, the placement of the winners would not be effective....