Principles of Marketing

Marketing Segmentation for a Sports Car

There are a multitude of segmentation strategies available to auto manufacturers who are selling sports cars globally. The basic segmentation approaches include demographic data on potential customers, including their age, income, professions, martial status, gender and previous car buying history. This would be consistent with measurable segmentation strategies. The substantial differentiation strategies often rely on segmentation on pricing alone, which is commonplace in commodity-like industries yet not so prevalent in sports cars. Differentiable segmentation is based more on the perceptions of consumers, influenced by the market positioning and unique value propositions that auto manufacturers create to distance their brands and autos from competitors. The use of benefit-based marketing that seeks to capitalize on the unique values and needs of a given segment of auto purchasers has proven to be effective in increasing sales (Sukhdial, Chakraborty, Steger, 1995). There is also the ability to segment markets based on how potential auto customers assign themselves into groups. This is called psychographics (Youn, Kim, 2008).