1.1    BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Stanton (1981:65) opined that market is defined or referred to as people who have needs to satisfy, money (purchasing power to back up the need) to spend and willingness to spend it for the purpose of satisfying the needs. In market demand, we have three factors in consideration; people with needs, their purchasing power and their buying behaviour. These factors are likely to differ in one or more respects. They may differed in resources, geographical location, product requirements, etc.

Market segmentation can be defined as the subdividing of a heterogeneous market into homogenous subsets of customers, where any subset may conceivably be selected as a target market to be reached with district marketing mix. In the case of Luck and Ferrel (1979), market segmentation is seen as a practical smart marketing strategy, in which a firm develops some product offerings designed to appeal to a specific part of the aggregate market.

The market segmentation includes that nearly every main market can be divided into several distinctive and viable sub-markets and development of different strategies to serve the needs and wants of each sub-segment by company. NBC plc uses this strategy to serve its customers. It uses the product features and advertising to convince the prospective buyers that its product are not different in outlook but better satisfying than the existing ones in the market. The product differentiation can be physical attributes like packaging, colour, size, weight, etc. it can also be non-physical attributes like product image, price, quality, durability and dependability.

In getting the functional part of this, it will be vital to discuss the sectors that influence market segmentation policy they are;

1. GEOGRAPHICAL FACTORS: Precisely, this deals with the division of buyers (market) into nations, economic conditions, regions, government regulations, climates, social cultural issues, etc.
2. PSYCHOGRAPHIC FACTORS: The psychographics form of market segmentation takes into account, the differences in life styles or personalities.
3. DEMOGRAPHICAL FACTORS: In demographical factors, different groups are distinguished on the basis of age, sex, family life cycle, religion, social class, etc.
4. SUB-MARKET SEGMENTATION: It consists of metropolitan of urban, semi-urban and rural areas.
5. PRODUCT APPLICATION: This factor consists of differences in the manufacture’s product being used by customer.

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