Overview of the Assignment
Successful companies operating in international markets must have a clear understanding of who their customers are and the factors that make that market unique. It is key for an entrepreneur and/or international marketer to understand customer segmentation and target marketing.
This individual assignment provides each learner with the opportunity to practice applying:
- The Customer Segmentation Framework, for Consumer Market, a customer segmentation tool that helps to identify and profile viable segments of customers in the given market. It also provides an opportunity to compare and assess segments in terms of their potential attractiveness using a…
- … Segment Attractiveness Assessment Framework, a decision matrix used to compare the relative attractiveness of potential customer segments.
Supported by secondary research, you will be using frameworks to complete your overall analysis of a specific geographic market. First, you will identify three potential customer segments in that geographic market, and then you will comparatively assess the attractiveness of each of these segments so you can make a recommendation of a primary target segment to pursue in that geographic market. You will be making the recommendation to the marketing manager of a Fortune 500 company.
Instructions
Your instructor will assign you one product from a large parent company for your analysis. Once you have been assigned the specific product you will be considering, you will need to complete the following steps:
- Identify a specific geographic location in which your assigned company could potentially market the product. As you see fit, you may choose a country, region, or city. Make your choice based on your ability to reasonably identify and find information on three distinct potential customer segments in that geographic market. In your actual paper, you do not need to explain your choice of geographic location.
- Identify and develop a profile for each of three distinct potential customer segments within that geographic market. You will describe the different segments using the four customer segmentation variables. (The geographic variable will be the same for all your segments, but the other three customer segmentation variables will differ by segment.) You will provide a concise but comprehensive summary of these segments and their attributes in the body of your paper, and you will provide a “Customer Segmentation Framework, for the Consumer Market” in the appendix of your paper that provides more detail on each segment. To learn enough about your chosen market such that you can identify appropriate customer segments and find uniquely relevant information to help you profile them, you will need to do secondary research.
Make sure you are using sources that are credible, relevant, and published within the last two years. Where you need to make some reasonable assumptions, state your assumptions clearly and explicitly, and provide solid rationale for these assumptions.
- In the next part of your paper, evaluate the relative attractiveness of these three segments using the criteria included in your Segment Attractiveness Assessment Framework. You will provide a concise but comprehensive summary of your analysis comparing the attractiveness of these segments in the body of your paper, and a “Segment Attractiveness Assessment Framework” in the appendix of your paper that provides more detail. Here, too, you will need to justify your analysis with information from your research.
- Based on your analysis of their relative attractiveness, you will recommend to the parent company of your assigned product which of the three segments you believe is the most appropriate as the primary target market, followed by the secondary market, and then tertiary market. To justify this recommendation, you will include your insights from your segment attractiveness analysis.
A suggested outline for your paper (not including your cover page, table of contents, reference page(s) and appendices) is as follows:
- Brief introduction to your paper, and your assigned company and product
- Customer Segment Descriptions
- Segment Attractiveness Analysis
- Recommendation(s)
