CHAPTER ONE

1.0      INTRODUCTION

Marketing is a business that identifies unfulfilled needs and wants defines and measures their magnitude determines which target market, the organization can best serve and decide on appropriate product, services and program to serve these markets.

Consumer are the most important things to consider while operating any business environment. It must therefore be clear that a through and constant study of the consumers is one thing and another entirely those needs of the consumer  at a profitable level, hence marketers resort to a lot of strategies.

Many people are confusing marketing for its sub-functions such as advertising selling and merchandising. But an authentic marketing is not the act of selling what you can make but knowing what to make. It is art of identifying and understanding customers profit to the producers and benefits for the stakeholders.

Market leadership is a gained by creating customer services therefore marketing can be viewed as customer oriented philosophy. It is the creation and delivery of a standard of living. Organization must try to identify a particular market that is more attractive and that can be managed affectively and profitable. Market segmentation attempts to identity significant difference in buyer characteristic which is used to determine which target market should be aimed at and the type of product to be given to that market.

Market segmentation can be define as the act of dividing a market into distinct parts. A market consists of buyer and these buyers differ in one or more respects.

They may differ in wants resources and geographical locations. Buying attitude and buying practices. Any one of all these can be used to segment a market in order to serve the customer more effectively and efficiently.

Market segmentation can therefore be defined as the act of dividing a market into distinct parts, that is the process of dividing the total heterogeneous market for a product into several submarket or segment each of which tends to be homogeneous in all. Significant aspects, it can also be define as the act of dividing a market into distinct and meaningful groups of buyers who might merit separate product and or market mixes.

Segmentation strategy helps the organization to find reaction in customer trait and producing in line with those characteristics so as to conform to those identified needs of the customers.

1.1   BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

It is obvious that companies can not connect all customers in large broad or diverse market and as a result of the needs to divide market in to group of consumer or segments with distinct needs and wants. It therefore becomes paramount for a company to identify                            

which market segment to serve better. Before  the objective can be achieved, it is required that a keen understanding of consumer behaviour and careful strategic thinking. To develop the best marketing planning, managers need to understand what makes each segment unique and different. Modern marketers in their quest to study consumer behaboviour and responses to benefit offer by the product for example do people want quantity rather than low price. In an attempt to increase benefit to consumers, this will aid marketers to know how best to satisfy each category of these customers. It required a keen understanding of consumers behaviour and careful strategic thinking.

The over all intent is to identify groups of similar customers and potentials customers to prioritize the groups to address to understand their behaviour and to respond with appropriate marketing strategic that satisfy the different performance of each choosen division and thereby improve the company revenue. This can however be achieved through a distinct division of groups of buyers who might requires separate product and for marketing mix known as market segmentation.

According to Michael Porter (1970 P:37) with the right segmentation, the right list can be purchased advertising results can be improved and customer satisfaction can be increased leading to better reputation

Nelson (1984 page 125) explain that united states in the 18 century provides a broad segmentation of the population of their country based statistical analysis of house hold and geo-demogrpahic data. The recent times market have been divided based on the number of general criteria. Such as industrial or public versus private, although industrial market segmentation is quite different from consumer market segmentation but both have similar objectives. Regardless of which type of segmentation a marketer uses, the secret behind the marketing programmes recognize customer differences and efficiently highlight the differences to offer maximum satisfaction to every division.

1.2      STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The quest for increasing the sales of consumer goods is every organisation’s problem. Both marketers of services and tangible seek to enhance profit and sales turnover and the objective of profitability can only be achieved when firms properly understand and apply the marketing segmentation strategy. Firms are also faced with the difficulty at identifying and selecting particular market target and  satisfying them by blending the marketing mix elements thus marketing segmentation, recognize that every market is made up of distingishedable segments consisting of buyers with different needs. The task of clearly understanding consumer needs and wants identifying various homogeneous customer characteristic according to an outlined dimension in order to group them together adequately and to effectively develop marketing mix to match these characteristic and buying requirements. All posses a fundamental marketing problem to firms.

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