The Marketer's Handbook: Reassessing Marketing Techniques for Modern Business

MARKET DEFINITION

Application: Strategy, Planning, NPD/NSD, Communication

The Concept

One of the most fundamental issues that marketers need to think about is how they define the market they operate in. This may sound simple, and it is, but there are many examples of businesses being damaged because their owners had not defined their market correctly. It is important because there is an assumption built into the fabric of a business that gives direction to its activities. If this assumption is not aligned to the market, the business will, in a competitive market, ultimately, fail.

Marketing and sales people can be so overwhelmed by the demands of their day-to-day job that they have very little time to investigate other industries or think about the relevance of different ideas to their market. As one of the classic marketing thinkers, Wroe Alderson, pointed out (Alderson, W., 1957), this results in group think and similar behaviours within markets, some of which is decidedly odd. Different beliefs and conventional wisdom grow up within different industry sectors which become the basis of business policy, such as a fascination with technology rather than what it can deliver. Some of these are profoundly idiotic and out of touch with the realities of the world. As a result, marketers, competitors, and buyers collude to conform to established ideas within markets, which can be restrictive. ...