Last week I handed in two assignments in subjects that both are major parts of my degree; one in a course called Advertising Effectiveness & Interpretation and one in International Advertising. Both of the assignments were concerned with target audiences, segmentation techniques and how the target audience differ from the target market. The theory I was most enamoured with was concerning psychographics and techniques to segment using values and beliefs rather than gender, income and whatever they make up ABC1 of. I believe that in a lot of cases what beliefs we hold or what values we share are far more important than where we live. Of course, often people with shared values tend to live relatively close to each other but it’s what they believe rather than their address that gives them a sense of belonging and unity.
In today’s Guardian Helen Brown asks herself whether IKEA is “in danger of extinction.” My problem with her reasoning is that it is based on a faulty perception of the target audience and market. The target audience was herself when she was a student and got her first flat. The false logic she applies is that she’s no longer a student, so therefore IKEA hasn’t got any more costumers. “Now that we consumers have grown up…”
Now the problematic things here are, that not only is she attacking a Swedish company which I hold dearly to my heart, but she presumes that age groups are static, the people who were 10 when she was 20 did not turn 20 when she turned 30. She also presumes that the target audience is the same as the target market. She reasons, that since the target audience, in her opinion is young people with low income, spend less in the recession, IKEA with its low price products will suffer. Whilst the target audience in fact are people with less money to spend, not people with little money to spend. The recession will only bring the people that shopped at SCP a year ago back to IKEA and even though she brings it up as a small point, ebay does not have the same target market as the Swedish giant.
The target audience is people with less money to spend but that still values good design. The target market is the furniture market and even though it is probably suffering greatly as everything else in the recession, she brings up no good reasons for why it should be.