Reference no: EM133410795
Case Study: When the founders of Awake first contemplated their target market, they had college students squarely in their cross hairs. This is aimed at a seement of people who are notorious for both all-night socializing and all-night studying Either
way, they are often very tired.
So when Awake hit campus convenience stores in 2012, the quirky combination of colourful packaging with a caffeinated
rick afracred the nist lova consumers. Bucrather than stat bound solev to students sits target market Awake move
MICAS GET
Adam Deremo contemplates, "One of the interesting things that happens if you operate a brand for long
enough (is that] you see a transition point, where now our most important consumer from a buying standpoints a millennial female who works in an office." But as Deremo points out, this has nothing to do with Awake shitting its focus, but more to do with Awake's initial consumers falling in love with the brand and staying loyal to it while transitioning from one life stage to another. "Just to prove the connectedness of consumer groups, when we ask that fernale millennial office worker where she first discovered the brand. there's a good subset of them who tell us they were first introduced to
us when they were in college."
Many companies will discover an unmet need for a particular segment, zone in upon that cohort, analyze it to confirm
e enough market to warrant the development or a produce
and then keep serving that target market as consumers grow into and out of it. But many companies aren't built around a
product unat can be easily ported from one lue stage to me nexc
While Deremo maintains that this "brand partnership" as he calls it, was all part of the original plan creating lifelong customer loyalty not even he and his cofounders expected something this interdependent. "That's actually one of the only long-term predictions we got right," he jokes. "But the reality is it's kind of the law of numbers. You have 4 to 5 years
in college, then zu to 30 vears in the work in vour career. So eventually there had to be more consumers in the work orce
than in university, and I'm just glad their brand affection has persisted."
Brand affection, as Deremo refers to it, speaks to an indelible subcomponent of behavioural segmentation, an often misunderstood and underappreciated component in target marketing. Companies often get hung up on geopsychodemographics. They make a product- skater shoes, for instance and market it primarily toward teenaged boys in urban centres, particularly on the West Coast. But then they're stuck when that segment grows up, and the incoming segment is disinterested in the fashion of its predecessor. Thus, companies are constantly redesigning products
to cater to the valnes and attitudes or the successor
In Awake's case, the flavour and functionality, portability, and appealing branding elements zoned in on the behavioural aspect of its consumers. The need being satisfied- finding a healthy, effective, and flavourful way to overcome mid afternoon fatigue created the brand partnership of which Deremo speaks. Customer loyalty is a core human behaviour to track in marketing. How committed customers are to a specific brand in a sea of alternatives largely comes back to familiarity and trust. Awake provided college students with a reliable solution to solve a common problem. But then it met them on the other side of graduation. It was there as a familiar and functional product to satisfy the same need but at a different stage of the life cycle.
The longstanding affection for Awake is primarily the result of a value-oriented product, but also one of having a flexible approach to target marketing. "It testifies to the quality of the product, but also to the fact that we were meeting the needs ofthe market that we set out to meet both then and now."
Questions
- Draw a table on your computer, with four columns, labelled Geographic, Demographic, Psychographic, and Behavioural. Using the material in this chapter, provide a minimum of two specific descriptors of Awake's target market.
- Of the four different segmentation variables, rank them in order of importance from the perspective of Awake.
- Behavioural segmentation, as mentioned in the case, is often either misunderstood or underappreciated in target marketing. Explain the difference between psychographic and behavioural segmentation characteristics.