Target market selection in B2B technology markets

Abstract

This article examines how marketing executives employ target marketing strategy in business technology markets. This exploratory study evaluated market selection strategies (differentiated, single segment, segment-of-1 and undifferentiated) and target marketing success. Particular attention is paid toward choosing target markets by examining segment attractiveness criteria. The three most important criteria for target market selection were opportunities in the industry, sustainable differential advantage and profitability. The research also found that competitive analysis was a strong predictor of target marketing success. In addition, market-oriented firms (use customer needs or customer groups to define markets) are more successful in using technology than non-market-oriented firms when redefining markets. The work concludes with sections on strategic implications for business target marketing and a research agenda for segmentation scholars.

Evaluating and classifying market alternatives using the CAPMA technique to assess potential export volume: an application for Turkey’s fig exports

“…Choosing the appropriate target market is a critical management decision because there are many feasible alternatives, a variety of conflicting goals and factors, and the inherent uncertainty and complexity of the problem. Therefore, organisations need methods for analysing and prioritising decision variables to identify advantageous markets according to specific criteria (Weinstein, 2014). Multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods deal with the process of finding the best option among feasible alternatives (Aghdaie and Alimardani, 2015) and support decision-making by analysing the criteria to select the most suitable alternative for the scenario (Oey et al, 2018).…”