Zappos marketing - Research Paper Example

Lecturer: Zippos Marketing Research Target Markets and Market Segmentation Zippos has been lucky to enter the market and exist in segments of people that have similar needs to satisfy. The variables that were used by the company to segment the market are; students and non-students, day and night commuters. The students are targeted in their dorms, sororities and entire fraternities. The non-students can be reached and categorized as residents in given areas and faculty/staff members in institutions.

These groups were found to have similar needs. These needs compatible practically for all these categories are; quality, convenience and reliability, savings and the strategic product features. Each of the products therefore has several market segments to increase the sales per segment. The particular bases of segmentation based on the nature of customers above there according to Zippos are geographic, demographic and behavioral. Based on density of population, statistical areas and global region, the geographical segmentation puts Zippos in the entire European Union, South America, USA and parts of Asia.

The actual customers that have expressed desire to buy Zippos products are all those that have accessibility to e-commerce procedures and there is a high stake of repeat-customers. The trends that will affect the, market are the grand technological changes which may have both positive and negative influences. 2. Market Share Since the size of the market of operation is very large, there are also challenges as far as competition is concerned. There are several multinational shoe manufacturing companies in the USA.

Some of these companies were established much earlier and command a very high market share as compared to Zippos which started in 1999. Since its formation, the company has grown both in size and in profits realized. In 2001 for instance, the company had sales revenue of $8.6 million. In 2004, the company had grown more and had earnings to the tune of $184 million in gross sales. This was followed by a further increase in sales in 2008 where the company clocked $1 billion in sales of its products.

This is a progressive trend meaning that the company has always been on the progressive trend. In fact, in 2011, the company was ranked position 31 among the best companies to work for by the fortune magazine. This, as compared to the other companies is also an indication of continuous growth. 3. Marketing Plan The sales forecast of the company has been done, initially by word of mouth and that is why the company has very many repeat customers. Attracting new customers is a paramount issue.

Apart from the markets mentioned earlier, there is a widespread presence in Europe but there are some markets that have not been extensively reached. Examples of such markets are those in the Middle East and Africa. This will be necessitated by the fact that the east has a high technological level especially internet connection and accessibility. Because this company operates on the basis of e-commerce, the high internet use and accessibility will be the most effective. Given that the company caters for transport for its products, this means that the customers will find it economical to purchase these items and develop in the market.

The main objective will be to reach $2 billion sales by the year 2015. This is achievable through aggressive advertisements (Hartley). References Hartley, Caren. Marketing Segmentation, targeting and Positioning. Print . Las Vegas , 2008.