Niche Marketing and Segmentation: Target Market and Strategies

This article discusses the concept of niche marketing and segmentation, including target market selection based on market segment evaluation. It also explores the strategies that companies use to reach their target markets, such as push and pull marketing techniques.

Running head: NICHE MARKETING
NICHE MARKETING
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NICHE MARKETING
Answer:
Organisations today use marketing segmentation strategy which finds use in niche
marketing to cater to the more specific needs of the target groups. The target groups consists of
children, teens and adults. The companies today also take into account individual hobbies and
preferences of consumers like preferences for colours and flavours while making their product
strategies.
Target market:
Target market as per Aghdaie, and Maryam (2015) can be defined as the set of customers
which companies wants to provide specific goods or services top serve their needs. The term can
also be defined as per Serrat (2017). The authors defines the term target market as the subset of
the total prospective consumer base which companies aim to serve by developing products
keeping the requirements and preferences of the chosen consumer base in view. Companies
segment their target markets using two main types of segmentation strategies namely,
demographic and psychographic segmentation. Demographic segmentation strategy targets
specific groups within a given population of consumers based on variables like age, gender,
occupation, marital status, family life stage, income status, educational levels, ethnicity and
religion. For example, premium life style products target the consumers with higher income.
Similarly, sports companies mostly target young to middle aged consumers who love adventures
and sports. Pyschographic segmentation is based on the variables like hobbies, opinion and
interests of the individual consumers. For example, the online video streaming platforms like
Youtube offer different types of videos and films like adventure to horror according to the
interests of the viewers.
Product being offered using niche marketing and segmentation:
The companies adopting the strategies of niche marketing and segmentation offer a wide
variety of products. The companies marketing diverse types of products like food products,
textile, lifestyle products, electronic products, automobile products, tourism packages and even
financial services use these tow strategies.

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How do companies reach target markets?
Multinational companies reach their target markets using push and pull marketing
strategies. The multinational companies in order to reach the target segments market their
products using their downstream supply chains consisting of third party distributors, wholesalers,
retailers and retail chains. These companies in order to embrace omni-channel marketing use
ecommerce channels and official websites (which usually has ecommerce link) to reach
consumers. These are the push marketing techniques (Madanoglu, Alon, and Shoham 2017).
The second strategy which multinational companies use to get access to consumers are
pull techniques. They advertise their products on media like television, newspapers, magazines,
hoardings and internet to attract or pull target consumers. The companies today in fact integrate
these two techniques to attract target consumer bases. They promote their products on social
media websites like Facebook and communicate with consumers to gain their responses and
expectations about their products (Chou et al 2016). The companies then incorporate consumer
feedback in their product strategies to manufacture products aligned to the needs of the specific
consumer groups. The companies then sell these products using their downstream supply chains.
Thus, it is evident from the discussion that companies integrate two marketing strategies namely,
push and pull strategies to get access to target consumer segments.
References:
Aghdaie, Mohammad Hasan, and Maryam Alimardani. "Target market selection based on
market segment evaluation: a multiple attribute decision making approach." International
Journal of Operational Research 24.3 (2015): 262-278.
Chou, Szu-Yu, et al. "Multichannel service providers' strategy: Understanding customers'
switching and free-riding behavior." Journal of Business Research 69.6 (2016): 2226-2232.
Madanoglu, Melih, Ilan Alon, and Amir Shoham. "Push and pull factors in international
franchising." International Marketing Review 34.1 (2017): 29-45.
Serrat, Olivier. "The future of social marketing." Knowledge solutions. Springer, Singapore,
2017. 119-128.