Market Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning essay
The basis for the segmentation is the social background of customers since the product, snackfood, is oriented on the lower- and middle-class customers, who lead an active lifestyle and have little, if any, time to cook food or to dine in conventional restaurants. The snackfood will be an affordable product in terms of price. Therefore, customers from the lower- and middle calss can afford buying snackfood on the regular basis.
At the same time, company is concerned with health-related issues. Today, many customers grow more and more concerned with what they eat because their food habits and food may have a negative impact on their health. In this regard, the snackfood is going to break stereotypes and to bust myths on fast food and its negative impact on human health. Instead, the new product will focus on customers, who are concerned with their health and pay attention to what they eat. If customers are concerned with healthy nutrition, then snackfood would be a good choice for them.
b. Target Market
The target market for the new product, snackfood will consist of the specific target customer group, including the youth and young adults mainly at the age of 18 to 35. This target customer group is the most appropriate because these customers are the most active part of the population, who often have little time for the full time dining and have to choose fast food. On the other hand, the target customer group of snackfood should be concerned with their health because customers should make a conscious choice in favor of snackfood instead of other fast food products offered in the market today en mass. At the same time, these customers are often limited in their financial resources and the affordable price of snackfood can attract them to the product, especially compared to other products, which are healthy but expensive and, therefore, unavailable to mass customers. In this regard, the orientation on the mass customers is an essential condition of the marketing success of the product because stable revenues and profits from the product can be obtained on the condition of mass sales of snackfood since the profit margin of the product is relatively low to make the product competitive in the fast food industry.
Furthermore, geographically, the target market for the new product, snackfood, will be the US with the possible further expansion to Canada and the EU. At the same time, the short-run marketing goal is the expansion of the new product in the domestic market of the US. In such a way, the new product can gain the solid basis on the ground of which the further international market expansion can occur.
c. Positioning Strategy
The company will position the product as healthy fast food delivered to customers anywhere any time at an affordable price. In such a way, the new product, snackfood, will be position in the fast food industry as one of the fast food products available to customer at an affordable price. However, the distinct feature of the new product will be ingredients and the product’s impact on customers’ health, since this fast food product will be healthy, unlike fast food products existing in the market today.
