Chapter 4
COMPLETING THE MARKETING AUDIT: 1 THE CUSTOMER AND MARKET AUDIT
SUMMARY
- A discussion of whom we sell to
- The difference between consumers and customers
- Why market share is important and why the term ‘market’ must be carefully defined
- Pareto analysis (the 80/20 rule) and its implications
- The market segmentation process is outlined. The steps are:
- defining the market
- market mapping
- listing decision makers and their purchases
- noting why these decision makers buy what they buy
- combining like-minded decision makers into segments by means of cluster analysis
- Methodologies are outlined and explained throughout
- A quick market segmentation method is provided
- Examples of market segmentation are provided
- Exercises to turn the theory into actionable propositions
- The next chapter focuses on what we sell to these identified markets
INTRODUCTION
This chapter contains some extracts from Market Segmentation: How to do it; How to profit from it by Malcolm McDonald and Ian Dunbar (Goodfellow Publishers, Oxford, 2010)1. These are reproduced with the permission of the authors.
Now that we understand the process of marketing planning, we can begin to look in more detail at its principal components. We have, as it were, seen the picture on the front of the jigsaw puzzle; we can now examine the individual pieces with a better understanding of where they fit.
The next two chapters are designed to help us to carry out a meaningful marketing audit. We have already looked at the issues that ...
