Marketing AS level-top 30 revision terms(3)

Market segmentation: analysing a market to identify the different types of consumer.By matching the consumer categories to the types of product on offer, unfilled market niches may emerge. The potential profitability of filling these gaps can then be assessed.The main ways in which a market can be segmented are:

• Demographically, e.g.by age, social class or sex
• Psychographically (by attitudes and tastes) e.g trendy versus staid, or home-loving versus adventurous
• Geographically, by region.

Market share:the percentage of all the sales within a market that are held by one brand or company.This can be measured by volume (units sold) or by value (the revenue generated).
Analysing trends in market share is important for a firm because it shows its position in relation to the market as a whole.It may not at 10 per cent, as market share is being lost.The 5 per cent sales increase may boost profits this year, but if the market becomes highly price competive as it reaches maturity, the firm's products may not be strong enough to survive.

Market size:the total sales of all the producers within a market-place, measured either by volume (units sold) or by value (the revenue generated). This information is needed to:

• Assess whether the market is big enough to be worth entering
• Calculate the market share held by your own products and brands
• Identify whether the market is expanding or contracting.

Mass marketing: targets the firm 's advertising and promotional spending at the whole market, not at a particular segment. This might be be sause the whole audience has to be addressed, e.g. with government road safety advertising.Most firms prefer niche marketing.

Niche marketing: a corporate strategy based on identifying and filling relatively small market segments. This can enable small firms to operate profitably in the marketsdominated by large corporations.It can also be strategy pursued by a large firm that prefeers to have five brands selling 50000 units in each of five niches, rather than one brand selling 250000 in the mass market