Importance of Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning in a Business

IMPORTANCE OF SEGMENTATION,
TARGETING AND POSITIONING IN A
BUSINESS
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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Overview of the tile.....................................................................................................................3
Background of an organisation....................................................................................................3
Research Questions......................................................................................................................3
Rational of the research...............................................................................................................4
Literature review..............................................................................................................................5
Explanation regarding the segmentation, targeting and positioning in business context? ?.......5
What is the major importance of segmentation, targeting and positioning in improving
business performance of M&S.?..................................................................................................6
What are the effective ways through which M&S can easily improve their business
performance?...............................................................................................................................8
Aims and objectives of the research................................................................................................9
Methodology..................................................................................................................................10
Data collection and interpretation..................................................................................................12
Designing questionnaire............................................................................................................12
Findings the outcomes...................................................................................................................13
Circulating the Questionnaire....................................................................................................13
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................23
Results with limitations and recommendations.............................................................................24
REFERENCS.................................................................................................................................25
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Introduction
Overview of the tile
Segmentation, targeting and positioning is a broad framework, which summarizes as well
as simplifies the process of market segmentation. These are main parts of marketing and help an
organisation in promoting of its product and also improving their brand positioning in
marketplace. Market segmentation is dividing a market into different groups by means of
different requirements, characteristics or behaviour who might need separate marketing or
product mixes. Targeting is a strategy through which large number of audiences is divided into
small segment as it become easy for Organisation to target particular group of people. The
Company can target particular segment such as gender, income, religion, age and geographic
location. Positioning is a strategy when any business chooses one particular area and fulfils their
needs and requirements. Along with this, segmentation, targeting and positioning are useful and
beneficial for the growth and success of company in marketplace as well as in customer mind.
There are different advantages of segmentation, targeting and positioning such as better
matching of customer’s needs, retain more customers, better opportunity for growth, improves
product and services, build strong customer loyalty, cope with market changes, design
promotional strategy etc., (DIXIT, 2020). These are major advantages that will be beneficial for
an organisation in improvement of its marketing or business performance in successful manner.
Background of an organisation
For this dissertation, M&S is a chosen multinational retailer that specialise in selling of
home products, food products and clothing. Main product is clothes that are available for men,
women, teenagers and children’s in all size and better quality. Company was founded in 1884 by
Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer, and headquartered in London, England, United Kingdom.
Company used segmentation, targeting and positioning, with aim of increasing customer base,
improving their brand image, increasing sales and improving their marketing performance.
Research Questions
 Explanation regarding the segmentation, targeting and positioning in business context?
 What is the major importance of segmentation, targeting and positioning in improving
business performance of M&S?
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 What are the effective ways through which M&S can easily improve their business
performance?
Hypothesis
H1: Segmentation, targeting and positioning is an effective model of marketing used by an
organisation for attracting larger customer base.
H2: Attracting large number of customer’s is a main importance of segmentation, targeting and
positioning in improving business performance of M&S.
H3 Creating good competitive position is an effective way through which M&S can easily
improve their business performance
Rational of the research
Main rationale behind selection of current topic or research is to determining the issues of
marketing for an organisation. For overcoming this issue, segmentation, targeting and
positioning will be applied (Chaffey and Smith, 2017). This research is important for an
individual, organisation, society and many more. This research will be beneficial in increasing
the knowledge regarding the segmentation, targeting and positioning in improvement of
marketing performance of company. An individual basis, present investigation assist investigator
by improving its data collection, presentation, data analysis, literature review and time
management skill. With the help of these skills, researcher becomes able in completing the full
project systematically and successfully.
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Literature review
Literature review introduces to the main and systematic process of gathering data from
secondary sources i.e. books, articles, publication research, journals etc. These are main sources
that will be used for collecting secondary information regarding the segmentation, targeting and
positioning. Main purpose of literature review is to explore the research gap in existing topic.
Within a current dissertation main gap is the significance of segmentation, targeting and
positioning for improving business performance. In previous investigations, there were lots of
information available regarding the segmentation, targeting and positioning in business
performance, but there were lack of data regarding its effectiveness in improvement of marketing
performance. In order to fulfil this gap, research questions will be used that will be explained as
below:
Explanation regarding the segmentation, targeting and positioning in business context?
According to the Kuntonbutr (2019), Market segmentation is the process which has three
tools those are segmenting, targeting and positioning. The STP process helps to increase the sales
by targeting particular segment and positioning product to increase the brand image. It is the
process in which market is diversified which defines the characteristics and tendency of the
market. The process of segmenting, targeting and positioning are the chronological order of the
market segmentation.
Segmentation Segmenting comprises of the identification of the market to be segmented.
It involves identification, selection and application of the bases that will be used in segmentation
and it also involves the profile's development (Delanoy and Kasztelnik, 2020). Segmenting is a
complex process because it is tough to understand that in what variables or factors the market
should be divided. Here comes the need of social, economic and individual factors with the wide
geographic, demographic and behavioural variables. Basically we can define segmenting as the
process where market is divided in the groups through which business can get advantages. While
dividing they should not divide in very little parts because over diversification is also not good
and can make difficult to serve in very small markets (Sulistyadi, Wening, and Herawan, 2019).
The two approaches are considered while performing the segmentation, the first one is
known as approach of discovery and the second one is approach of analytic. The first approach is
future oriented and gives the idea of that if the investment made is worthwhile or not. The second
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approach is based on observing buying behaviours of that particular segment. Both approaches
can get benefits from the elements of the each other.
Targeting: This starts once segmenting is done. It is the follow on process of segmenting, in the
process of targeting the planning of the media is used to make the segment appealing. The
traditional targeting used print media for the advertising and the other different sources; it has
made the social presence active. In targeting it is decided that which market segment should be
targeted from the various alternatives (Doerin and Suresh, 2016). It gives the answers to some of
the questions like the segment which is selected has the potential customers which should be
targeted or not, would it be able to gain profits if this segment is converted. If the company is
equipped with the enough resources so that they can serve to that particular segment. It takes a
lot of time and hard work to target the particular segment of the potential customers. The
Company target different segment group as they offer clothes to different gender and delivers
various varieties of product to different segment.
Positioning: This is the last step among the segmenting and targeting. It is last stage where
the customers tell about the product or services of the company. It is that stage where customer’s
views matter the most about the company's product and services in comparison to the
competitor’s product. Ultimately customer’s views and their words of mouth help in building the
image of the product in the market and help to gain competitive advantage from the competitors
in the market (Dryglas and Salamaga, 2017). There are three types of positioning to gain or attain
the competitive advantage are functional positioning, experiential positioning and symbolic
positioning. The Company can use positioning map technique as it helps to find out existing
product and services position in Market and it becomes easy for them to select a place where
Organisation want to position their products and services. Functional positioning gives attention
to the customers’ needs and wants from the products or services. Symbolic positioning focuses
on those products or services which maintain or satisfy the self-esteem of the existing customers
as well as potential customers. Experiential positioning focuses on building emotional
connection with customers through their products and services. With all these three positioning
the company achieve competitive advantages from their competitors in market.
Main reason behind selection of STP model to M&S because it helps in identification of accurate
information about the segmentation, targeting and positioning of M&S. This is a useful model
when developing marketing communication plans that turn to facilitates marketers to prioritise
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