Transcript Consumer Profiles

Consumer Profiles & Marketing
Research

A target market is any group of consumers to
whom marketers want to sell their products and
services
 Companies
break down their most likely
customer by age, gender, race, occupation,
salary level, geography, interests, and any
other characteristic that is common amongst
these consumers
 Psychographics are a person’s feelings,
beliefs, tastes, opinions and personality
traits
 The
more companies know about their
potential customers, the better they are able
to anticipate or influence their customers’
buying decisions
 Marketers create consumer profiles of the
kind of people most likely to be attracted to
a specific product
 Companies
then take these consumers and
create marketing groups of consumers that
share similar interests and buying habits
 This enables marketers to ensure that their
marketing efforts are
directed at the correct
group of consumers, the
ones that will be most
interested in the product
 Sporting
Goods Store
 Individual 23 to 52 years of age
 Participates in sports
 Wants good-quality sports equipment
 Looks for good prices
 Lives in city of ______________
 Average household income: $42 000 per year
 Companies
divide their consumer profiles
between the:
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Primary Market – the most likely consumer
Secondary Market – other, occasional consumers
 Although
companies spend the majority of
the marketing budget on the primary market,
they do allocate some to the secondary
market
 Knowledge
of consumer profiles affects the
following elements of a marketing plan
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Distribution Methods – how to best deliver the
product to the consumer
Advertising – helps advertisers create meaningful
messages
Product Design – consumers in a target market
tend to like the same colours, shapes,
materials, and other design features
Media – helps marketers send the promotional
message to the right target audience
 Information
collected for the very first time
to fit a specific purpose
 Survey: list of questions to ask your
customers to find out demographic and
psychographic information
 Mail, phone, Internet or in person
 Observation
 Want to open a juice bar in the mall, you
might want to see how many customers you
could attract
 Focus Group – interviews with small numbers
of people – more discussion and interaction

There are 3 types of research that businesses use
to discover trends affecting their target
customers

Primary research
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Secondary research
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Involves collecting the information yourself through
direct contact with potential customers
Much more expensive but usually more detailed and
useful
Involves using information that has already been
collected by others
Much cheaper but not always relevant or applicable
Internal research

Involves using a businesses own records to gather
information about potential customers
 There
are a number of forms that primary
marketing research can take
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Survey
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Observation
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Questionnaire to find information
Conducted by phone, mail, online, or in person
Staying detached from the potential customer, simply
watching from a distance
Experimentation / product sampling

Testing the product or service with a small number of
potential customers to determine reaction