This article is about special characteristics of the market.
Successful Marketing requires firms to understand which market they are operating in, who their consumers are and where they are located, whether the market is growing or shrinking, what the business’s share of that market is and how strong the major competitors are.
What is meant by special characteristics of the market?
Special characteristics of the market exist in addition to basic characteristics of the market.
Basic characteristics of the market include the existence of the buyers and sellers, the establishment of contact between the buyers and sellers, dealing the same or very similar commodity, competition and the existence of the specific price for that commodity
Special characteristics of the market include geographic characteristics, demographic characteristics and psychographic characteristics.
What are special characteristics of the market?
Special characteristics help to better describe the market in details to give marketers a clearer picture making marketing planning, specifically market segmentation and targeting, more appropriate.
1. Geographic characteristics.
This includes location and climate.
While some markets focus on a very specific area with a very specific product such as non-beef hamburgers in India or karate clothes in Japan, other markets target global audience such as smartphones and personal computers, cars and soft drinks.
The weather plays a big role in cyclicality (seasonality) of some markets. For example, skiing holidays in winter and hiking trips in summer in Aspen in Colorado in the US. Particular fruits such as pineapples and mangoes will only grow in a very specific climate making farming them constrained by seasonal factors.
2. Demographic characteristics.
This includes age, gender, race and ethnicity, marital status, religion, language, family size and family lifecycle, education level, occupation, income, income distribution and social class.
Characteristics of customers include differences in demography. Demography is the study of demographic factors within a certain area, population data and trends in the society. These factors are often combined when segmenting a market to separate markets in order to prepare appropriate marketing strategies towards these different demographic groups.
While rich middle-aged men are the main customers of luxury sports cars such as Porsche or Maserati, on another hand, basic food items such as rice, bread and flower will be purchased by almost all customers to fulfill basic human needs.
3. Psychographic characteristics.
This includes personalities, values, attitudes, habits, hobbies, emotions and interests.
Psychographic factors focus on differences in how people live their lives. They can be used to group customers depending on their lifestyles in a useful way. The term lifestyle is rather broad relating to daily activities undertaken, hobbies, personal opinions, purchasing patterns, etc.
While extroverted outgoing people prefer beach holidays and trying various extreme sports, introverts would rather choose quiet holidays in the wooden house by the lake in the forest and reading a book. An individual’s social class will have much to do with a person’s attitudes and feelings towards private education, organic food, holidays abroad or lifelong learning.
To sum up, in addition to the essential features of the market such as an area, one commodity, the buyers and sellers, free competition and one price, special characteristics of the market can provide Marketing Managers with valuable insights regarding geography, demography and psychography of the customers.
