The concept of segmentation is to group buyers into groups depending on criteria chosen by the company. The reason for this is that buyers have different needs and wants and it is impossible for a company to satisfy all of these needs, so in order to identify them or find a "hole" in the market the company will segment the market.
Segmentation can be demographic, socioeconomic, geographic, geodemographic, psychographic or behavioural. Demographic segmentation is dependant on a number of variable, these being the population in which trends are important because they show whether a product is in demand or not, e.g. birth rates are declining and so there is not so much need for baby foods or toys but this decline may be a result of more working women which creates an opening in the market for frozen foods such as the Bird's Eye company. Age is another variable because now there are more senior citizens than adolescents, this is good since it is older people who have the highest income rate and are biggest spenders and also results in an increase in demand for pension plans, medical services and other needs.
Industrial market segmentation
This Is Not the Target Market
Figure 1Products can be segmented depending on the gender, but because of the change in women's role the behaviour patterns are also changing. This means that even cleaning products are being aimed at men through advertisements maybe, for example a famous chef, Ainsley, endorses Mr Muscle cleaning products. Family is an important group since it involves two or more related people. This market especially can be segmented into many other subdivisions. Households open up a lot of opportunities for an organization who may be able to cater for big families (and sell the 200g boxes of cereal since it will be cheaper than three boxes of the smaller packs)...