1. Customer-Driven Marketing Strategies
Bluefield College
September 30, 2010

2. Major Influences on Business Buyer Behavior

3. Stages of the Business Buying Process

4. Designing a Customer-Driven Marketing Strategy

5. Segmentation
Dividing a market into smaller segments with distinct needs, characteristics, or behaviors that might require separate marketing strategies or mixes.
Demographic, geographic, psychographic and behavioral characteristics are used.
Demographic:
Age, gender, family size, family life cycle, income, occupation, education, race, religion, generation, nationality.
The most popular bases for segmenting customer groups as needs, wants and usage often vary by demographics.
Easier to measure than most other types of variables.

6. Market Segmentation
Age and life-cycle stage addresses the fact that consumer needs and wants change with age.
Avoid stereotypes in promotions based on age.
Promote positive messages when marketing to mature consumers.
Gender:
Neglected gender segments can offer new opportunities.
Income:
Identifies and targets the affluent for luxury goods.
People with low annual incomes can be a lucrative market.
Troubled economy makes marketing to all income groups a challenge.

7. Market Segmentation Geographic: Nations Region of country States
Counties
Cities
Neighborhoods

8. Market Segmentation Psychographic segmentation:
Dividing a market into different groups based on social class, lifestyle, or personality characteristics.
Behavioral segmentation:
Dividing buyers into groups based on consumer knowledge, attitudes, uses, or responses to a product.

9. Market Segmentation Behavioral segmentation: Occasion segmentation:
Special labels and promotions for holidays.
Special products for special occasions.
Benefits sought:
Different segments desire different benefits from products.
User status:
Nonusers, ex-users, potential users, first-time users, regular users.
Usage rate:
Light, medium, heavy.
Loyalty status:
Brands, stores, companies.
Divide into groups by degree of loyalty.

10. Requirements for Effective Segmentation
To be useful, market segments must be:
Measurable
Accessible
Substantial
Differentiable
Actionable

11. Market Targeting
Market targeting involves evaluating and selecting marketing segments.
Segment size
The largest segment isn’t always best.
Segment structural attractiveness
Competition, substitute products, power of buyers and suppliers are examined.
Fit with company objectives
Company resources.

12. Selecting Target Market Segments
Targeting strategies include:
Undifferentiated (mass) marketing:
Ignores segmentation opportunities.
Differentiated (segmented) marketing:
Targets several segments and designs separate offers for each.
Concentrated (niche) marketing:
Targets one or a couple small segments.
Micromarketing (local or individual marketing)
Tailoring products and marketing programs to suit the tastes of specific individuals and locations.
Local marketing: Tailoring brands and promotions to the needs and wants of local customer groups.
Individual marketing: Tailoring products and marketing programs to the needs and preferences of individual customers.

13. Positioning
The way the product is defined by consumers on important attributes—the place the product occupies in consumers’ minds relative to competing products.
Perceptual positioning maps define a brand’s position relative to competitors.

14. Differentiation and Positioning
Choosing a differentiation and positioning strategy involves:
Identifying a set of differentiating competitive advantages on which to build a position.
Choosing the right competitive advantages.
Selecting an overall positioning strategy.
Competitive advantage:
An advantage over competitors gained by offering greater customer value, either through lower prices or by providing more benefits that justify higher prices.

15. Differentiation and Positioning
Identifying possible value differences and competitive advantages:
Key to winning target customers is to understand their needs better than competitors do and to deliver more value.
Finding points of differentiation requires that marketers examine the entire customer experience.
Types of differentiation:
Product differentiation
Services differentiation
Channels differentiation
People differentiation
Image differentiation

16. Differentiation and Positioning
Choosing the right competitive advantage requires selecting how many and which differences to promote.
Unique selling proposition is often preferred.
Promoting multiple differences is possible.
Worthwhile differences that could be promoted:
Important
Distinctive
Superior
Communicable
Preemptive
Affordable
Profitable

17. Possible Value Propositions
Overall or full positioning of the brand is called the brand’s value proposition.