Characteristics Of Target Market

1. Target Market According to the textbook Strategic Marketing Problems by Roger A. Kerin and Robert A. Peterson, a target market is defined as a specific group in which a company will focus its efforts into marketing its product or services to. Before a company can go on with production, the marketing manager needs to decide who will use their product? As stated in the text, the question that needs to be answered is “Where to compete?” This is a very vital part in the marketing strategy. When it comes to Target Markets, it is important to know who those potential consumers may be. Defining the demographics is important in being able to differentiate between primary, secondary, and tertiary markets. As learned in previous marketing classes with Dr. Haakon Brown, the primary markets are usually the ones a marketing manager will decide to market its products to. Even though a primary market may be the first choice, it doesn’t mean it is the largest. As discussed in Consumer Behavior: Buying, Having, and Being, by Michael Solomon, the primary target market usually has certain key demographics that a company may be looking to market. An example would be Harley Davidson because their primary market is Caucasian men who are 35 years and older as stated on their official investors website. Even
Two reasons for this is because it is cheaper to use data that was already collected and it saves time. Since there are two types of secondary date; internal and external, there are multiple sources to choose from. For example, the internal data that can be used are financial statements, budgets, and actual sales and the external data that can be used are business periodicals, Trade association studies, and U.S. Census reports. One reason why someone would prefer to use primary data is because the data would be more specific to the problem that needs to be