Defining target audiences: the mass market

When looking at target audience you must difine it in appropriate termonology and by looking into theories that marketing companies use in real life. Using the theories they gain a better understanding of what to use and look for when marketing new products.This is praticually true for advertisers, whom of which led the way in targeting groups of consumers. To investigate exactually how large their share of market research was television companies and advertisers pioneered new techniques of market research which involved quantitative surveys where they attempted to count how many people they reached. An example of this was television ratings which still has an enormous effect on workings of T.V stations. 


One way of defining target audience is through class or income bracket/status. This is a more dated method as it does nto give us a great deal of information other than the kind of job the main wage-earner of the household has. My choosen target audience fits in with the 'people at lowest level of income'. They are unemployed, student, casual worker. This makes them inocme bracket 'E'. However my choosen audience I feel would come from a well together middle class family which would then differ the status of what they may be as middle class in income bracket 'B'. This clearly shows that this method does not give very accurate resaults and for that reason is often not used as much as it once was.

Another method of defining target audience was 'Young and Rubicam's Four Consumers'. Due to the concept of class becoming less and less fashionable advertisers beging to think about other ways they could use and this is one they came up whith. It is split up into four different cateogaries that are not based on salary statistics but on how the person goes about using the money they earn. This is less statistical and more about personality. I feel that my target audience is a 'mainstreamer' this is simply becasue they likes security and being part of a group. Beign part of the group my doing what they do, wearing what they want to wears and by acting the way they want to act. This is not a bad category to be put in as it does take up 40% of the population but this also plays a big part on their age. The opposite to my target audience would be 'Reformers' who defiene themselves by their levels of self-esteem and self-fulfilment.

And finally the last concept of defining target audience is by using the 'LifeMatrix'. The 'LifeMatrix' is a more modern approach to targeting audiecne. The 'LifeMatrix Tool' was launched by MRI and RoperASW, it defines ten audience cateogaries, centered both around values, attitidues, beleifs and more fundimental demographic audience cateogaries. There are ten cateogaries each summaries the differnet aspects of people to then match them. This is a great way for advstisers when introduce new things into the market. My target audience is 'Tribe wired' this means that they are free-spirited and a creative young single however thier family may seem like 'Dynamic duos' that are Hard-driving, High-involvment.