Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning

Hello people, and welcome to yet another of my blogs. Today the topic is STP. You guys might think what is STP, well STP stands for Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning. These three are mostly used before any planning for marketing programs. This helps companies in differentiating their products what they are offering and from that the companies competitors are ensured that the same type of product gets the same market profile for it deserves. Below is a picture of an orange, but this orange gives us a lot to think about in the marketing world.

This picture of the orange symbolises the segmentation as three slices of the oranges represent three different products and how they are going to segment themselves in the market.

Instead of writing it in full I will use the short abbreviated form (STP). When companies do market research it is all part of STP. It uses information on the present size of market, the current shares of market, the potential customers, their purchases, their decision process, etc.

STP when come together consists of three stages. The first being the one in which one has to determine what kind of customers are there. The second one being where one has to select what customers are best to be served. The final stage being the one where the segmentation has to be done by the products or the service for the segment has to be optimized.

When talking about segmentation on its own, it basically has some factors, some people call it categories and these factors/categories consist of Age, Gender, Personality, Income (how much you earn), Social Class, Lifestyle, etc.

After Segmentation is done, the next step is Targeting. In this step the chosen segments by the companies for the product or service have to be developed for a strategy to be targeted to the particular target group/customers. After doing that, what is left for the company to do is the selection of the easier way of how to target their chosen customers.

Have covered Segmenting, covered Targeting, now its the turn of Positioning. Basically Positioning is all about the involvement of the way the companies target their customers. For example Microsoft is a company which positions itself in the IT market and when it comes to promoting its products or services it does it through all forms of media.

Below is a picture describing what each of the STP do.

This is all for this weeks post and on this topic, will be back with more postings soon. Till then please feel free to comment or give any suggestions for improvements.