Chapter 5

Chapter five starts by describing what is market segment and the importance of it. A market segment, the fist step in developing a marketing strategy,  is a group of people or organizations with similar characteristics and interests. As a marketer, we have to clearly understand that every products have different market segmentations, what is popular here in America might not be popular in Germany for example, like the four-legged desks -Winning Strategies article.  

Now that we know what a market segment is, we need to understand the importance of the three characteristics of a qualified market: Need or desire of a product, the ability to purchase the product, and the authority to do so. We as marketers can spend all the money in the world promoting a product on a foreign country but as the book said an American kid might be able to buy a canned coke while a kid in Cuba might not. 

Chapter 5 describes the three typical strategies used by international marketers. Undifferentiated segmentation strategy is used when a company looks at all customers as one market. It is normally used when a market is too small to be profitable to target, or when there's a small group the the majority of the product. Concentrated segmentation strategy, is used when a company has one clearly defined market, small market with few potential competitors. And a differentiated segmentation,  is used when a company target two or more segments with unique strategies, pursue different segments of the market or market multiple products. 

Consumer Market profiles are made up of different variables that describe your target market like demographics, cultural, geographic, and product usage characteristics. Demographics are characteristics such as age, gender, race, income, and education. Cultural Segmentation, also known as lifestyle characteristics are made u of values, activities, interests and opinions. Geographic Segmentation, describes where consumers are located. This is a very strong criteria for some products. For my Business to consumers Marketing plan I am promoting a bathing suit line. If I decide to Globalize this brand and sell it on a foreign country one of the most important criteria I have to keep in mind is the geographic segmentation because my product as profitable in The Alps as it is in the French Riviera for example. Product Usage, describes how much a product is used.

Chapter 5 also mentions that you don't need to find a foreign country to find international markets which I think find very interesting. Being hispanic myself I completely agree, I moved to this country 6 years ago and all though I understand and respect the American culture in my household we still live a Colombian lifestyle, we still value our family ties and strong religion affiliations and adapt them to our life here in America. For a marketer this thigs are very important and vital, specially here in America where the population is so diverse.

It is important to pursue new market opportunities because as the book says, new market and businesses help business grow. Now a days things change so fast, and there are so many things and businesses out there that if you are not constantly innovating and introducing new products into an existing market, for example the store net to you will and by ding this they will take your clients. The book says that a company can pursue four basic strategies, pursue no new products or markets, introduce new products into an existing market, introduce existing products in a new market and introduce a new product into new markets. 

A portfoilio of marketers is a collection of different products in different market locations. The more products you have the lower the business risks is, and it's also important to know that not having new products or markets can increase the risk.

Screening is the process of finding potential market opportunities to pursue, you should first start with a long ist and shortly screen this list to a smaller number. There's a four-step process for this. Identifying a market, find the market that the business should chose. Identify competitive advantages, identify the competitors and the competitive products for each potential market. Estimate industry sales, include all of the sales within a business category. Estimate share of market, the percentage of a market that a business could capture.

The last portion of this chapter talks about market research. Market research is the systematic process of gathering information to help make marketing decisions. There are four steps in the marketing research process. Define the problem, identify the area that needs to be researched. Analyze secondary data, data that has been previously collected. Collect primary data, information that has not been collected before. It involves two processes, designing a data collection plan and ten collecting the data. And the last step is to perform data and decision making. Once you've analyzed everything very carefully managers must use everything to make a decision.