Marketing Management, 16th Edition

Identifying Target Customers

There are many techniques for identifying target customers.2 Once the firm has identified its market opportunities, it must decide how many and which ones to target. Marketers are increasingly combining several variables in an effort to identify smaller, better-defined target groups in order to develop an offering that can fulfill these customers’ needs better than the competition. Thus, a bank may not only identify a group of wealthy retired adults but also, within that group, distinguish several segments depending on current income, assets, savings, and risk preferences. This has led some market researchers to advocate a needs-based targeting approach.

Targeting is the process of identifying customers for whom ...