[Mageia-dev] Identifying Target Markets

[Graham Lauder]

On Friday 01 Oct 2010 20:37:52 Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
> 2010/10/1 Graham Lauder <yorick_ at openoffice.org>:
> >> The families: if the kid wants a computer then either Dad buys a new
> >> one and the kids get the old, or they buy a new one but mom has no
> >> say, it's either Dad or the kids because the parents don't know
> >> anything about computers.
> > 
> > Nonsense, It's interesting I know quite a few German families here in NZ,
> > perhaps that's why they migrated, so the wife could make the majority of
> > the purchasing decisions.  ;)  I'm afraid that your impressions fly in
> > the face of all the real marketing intelligence. Dad or kids buy the
> > computers because Mum has been left out of the demographic, typical
> > given the number of women in the industry, but target that demographic
> > and Mum becomes decision maker.
> 
> I don't know about marketing, I've just been living here for decades
> and been helping in the computer field for more than 15 years. I hold
> computer courses entry level, I give advice with computer purchases in
> families, etc. All my practical experience tells me what I've written
> here.

OK then let me put it another way, you have taught IT for 15 years.  Probably 
in the same geographic area.  It's a pretty good guess that you have probably 
no more than three degrees of separation to maybe 90% of the people you 
interact with.  90+% of the people that you interact with speak the same 
native tongue as you, so already your view of the world is extremely limited.

So lets talk hypothetically: If you have taught for 15 years and you had an 
average class size of say 20. 5 periods a day  that's a hundred faces a day 
and you saw these people once a week and assuming a 40 week school year.  
That's 20,000 a year.... hang on not enough, OK you change completely 4 times 
a year, so that's 80.000 a year... wow that's a lot, over 15 years that's 
1.2million people you could have hypothetically interacted with each for about 
ten hours total.  However in marketing terms on a global scale that is a 
pinprick sample.  Marketers get information for instance, just from rewards 
programmes that do that sort of sample in many countries in any one hour of 
any one day across many demographics, ages, income streams, locations and so 
on and what this tells us is that apart from some minor local differences, 
people in western democratic, first world countries behave in a very similar 
fashion.        

> 
> > Every place is unique, but not as unique as we'd all like to believe, one
> > thing that marketing tells you.  A good example is Micky Ds, the same
> > everywhere, with slight local variations.
> 
> Nonsense (to use the same language as you do). You can't apply some
> junkfood chain success story to computers and software.

LOL, in fact you can, at the end of the day it is a consumer item.  It is a 
luxury good that only a small proportion of the worlds population can afford. 
In capitalist consumer model societies the market has little variation apart 
from local fashion. So for instance, like McDs,  Ipods and Iphones are sold 
the same way world wide and that is matched with other global brands.

> 
> As I said, I disagree with your points not because I am another
> marketing guy but because of experience.
> 
> wobo

As I pointed out above your experience is in fact limited, that's not a bad 
thing, it means you can target those variations that the global brands ignore 
in a local market.  However our need is to be a global brand and so we target 
demographics that we know exist every where.  So for instance: Parents 
everywhere, no matter what country or society, want the best for their Kids... 
simple really. 

Cheers
GL   

-- 
Graham Lauder,
OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ
http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html

OpenOffice.org Migration and training Consultant.

INGOTs Assessor Trainer
(International Grades in Open Technologies)
www.theingots.org