Good market segmentation has three advantages: first, to gain high loyalty from consumers; second, to protect corporate profits; and third, to be easy to succeed. Take Haier as an example. What are Haier's mainstream products when it enters the American market? Refrigerator, but not a big refrigerator. If you go to America or watch American movies, you can see that the refrigerator in their kitchen is very big, which is related to their living habits. They only drive to go shopping once a week. When they are shopping by car, they can't wait to buy food for a week and put it in the refrigerator, so they must have a big refrigerator. However, Haier's refrigerator is not a big refrigerator, but a small refrigerator. What should a small refrigerator do to enter this market? To segment the market, it is necessary to find a gap product. At present, Haier mini refrigerator has quite a buyer among American students because it meets the market demand.
Customized Marketing Makes Enterprises More Competitive —— Haier's Market Segmentation Strategy
Recently, Haier launched a "customized refrigerator". The so-called customized refrigerator means that the refrigerator that consumers need is designed by consumers themselves, and enterprises customize a special refrigerator according to the design requirements put forward by consumers. For example, consumers can customize their favorite appearance color or built-in refrigerator according to the color of their furniture or their own preferences. He can choose the appearance of "Golden Prince", the volume of "Big Prince", the built-in of "European" and the lines of "American" to meet the different needs of customers to the greatest extent.
The following figures provide a powerful explanation for the market's response to this move: Haier launched the "customized refrigerator" in August 2000, and received more than 6,543,800 orders from the Internet. What does this number mean? 1995, the annual output of Haier refrigerators exceeded100000 units for the first time. In less than five years, this record was set in one month by customizing the refrigerator. It is equivalent to 1/3 of the annual production and sales of Haier refrigerators.
Customized marketing, marketing with "personality"
Consumers hope that the products they buy can show their unique personality, which requires the products produced by enterprises to be rich in variety and not identical.
As a result, customized marketing came into being.
Customized marketing refers to a marketing method in which an enterprise regards each customer as a separate market segment on the basis of mass production and carries out marketing combination according to the specific needs of individuals to meet the specific needs of each customer. Modern customized marketing is different from previous manual customization. Customized marketing is put forward when simple mass production cannot meet the diversified and personalized needs of consumers. Its most prominent feature is to produce products according to the special requirements of customers. Compared with traditional marketing methods, customized marketing has the following advantages:
1 can greatly meet the individual needs of consumers and improve the competitiveness of enterprises. In this regard, Haier's "customized refrigerator" service has fully explained this point.
2. Reduce the inventory backlog by sales and production. In the traditional marketing model, enterprises strive to reduce the unit product cost and expand production by pursuing economies of scale. Maximize profits. This is certainly very competitive in the seller's market. But with the formation of the buyer's market. This large-scale product variety is similar, which will inevitably lead to unsalable and overstocked products, resulting in idle and waste of resources, and customized marketing has avoided this situation well. Because at this time, the enterprise produces according to the actual orders of customers, and the production is really determined according to the demand, there is almost no inventory backlog, which greatly speeds up the turnover of enterprise funds. At the same time, it also reduces the waste of social resources.
3. It is conducive to promoting the continuous development of enterprises, and innovation is an important factor for enterprises to keep their vitality forever. But innovation must combine the needs of the market and customers. Otherwise, it will not be conducive to the competition and development of enterprises. In the traditional marketing model. R&D personnel of the enterprise tap new market demand through market investigation and analysis, and then launch new products. This method is limited by the ability of researchers and is easily misled by wrong survey results.
In customized marketing, customers can directly participate in product design, and enterprises can directly improve products according to customers' opinions, so as to realize product and technological innovation and always keep consistent with customers' needs, thus promoting the continuous development of enterprises.
Custom marketing is not perfect.
Of course, customized marketing is not perfect, and it also has its drawbacks. First of all, customized marketing regards each customer as a separate market segment, which of course allows each customer to be treated differently according to their different needs and characteristics, so that enterprises can better serve customers. But on the other hand, it will also lead to complicated marketing work, increased operating costs and increased operating risks. Secondly, with the progress of technology and the rapid spread of information, the differences between products are fading, and today's featured products and services may become popular tomorrow. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to maintain the uniqueness of products and services for a long time. The implementation conditions of customized marketing require enterprises to have excellent software and hardware conditions. First, enterprises should strengthen the construction of information infrastructure. Information is the carrier of communication between enterprises and customers. Without smooth communication channels, enterprises can't know the needs of customers in time, and customers can't accurately express what products they need. At present, the development of Internet, information superhighway, satellite communication and audio-visual integrated videophone provides a good solution to this problem. The success of Haier's customized refrigerator is inseparable from its perfect e-commerce network facilities.
Secondly, enterprises must establish flexible production systems. The development of flexible production system is the key to realize mass customization marketing.
The "flexibility" mentioned here is relative to the rigid standardized automatic production mode developed in the 1950s. Flexible production system generally consists of CNC machine tools, multifunctional machining centers and robots. By changing the control software, it can adapt to the processing requirements of different varieties and styles, so that the production line of enterprises has the ability of rapid adjustment.
Third, and most importantly, the successful implementation of customized marketing must be based on the excellent management system of the enterprise. Without excellent management, the implementation of "customized marketing" will be difficult to achieve. For example, Haier's "customized refrigerator" service, design system, mold manufacturing system, production, distribution, payment and service are much higher than ordinary refrigerators. If consumers value the appearance of the "Golden Prince", the size of the "Big Prince" and the built-in "European version" and "American version" refrigerators are easy to do, it is impossible for ordinary enterprises to make millions of different refrigerators exactly the same. In fact, in order to achieve this rapid success, Haier honed its concept and technology several years ago.