Forecasting
Demo-graphical
Demographic Marketing – It’s only a Start
The Toyota story is an excellent example for people to remember when building a marketing strategy based on traditional demographics. In this case , demographics are important for directing key strategy – you can’t fight Mother Nature. Customers get older and pass on. They become wealthier or poorer. They become less physically active or they find their household increasing or decreasing in size. For years marketers have relied on traditional demographic measures to define target markets, key customers, and strategy. And researchers who are tasked with gathering useful information about the markets maintain a demographic mindset to support this approach.
But to be truly useful, market research cannot rely solely on demographics. To escape narrowly focused market definition – and we are talking about narrow focus on both dimensions from the Toyota example: narrowly defining needs by broadly assuming the demographic market (the Echo mistake) and narrowly defining the audience to create richer needs (the Scion challenge) – marketers and market researchers must break out of this paradigm.