MCS 3500 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Psychographic, Switching Barriers, Dependent And Independent Variables

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Marketing and Consumer Studies
• Course: MCS 3500
• Professor: Towhidul Islam

Document Summary

Markets are heterogeneous: customers differ in their values, needs, wants, beliefs & incentives to act. Products compete to satisfy needs & wants of customers. Through segmentation, a firm aims for a happy middle ground where it doesn"t rely rely on a common marketing program for all customers or incur the high costs of developing a unique program for each customer. Market segment: a group of actual potential customers who can be expected to respond in a similar way. Market segmentation: a business process of finding groups of customers who are similar on some specific criteria of relevance t firm"s strategic context such as needs, age, sex etc. Segmentation is viewed as the 1st step in the 3-step process of segmentation, targeting & positioning. Stp marketing offers the promise of a better fit between a company"s offering to a customer and what the customer really values.