TARGET MARKET AND MARKET SEGMENTATION

      Target market is a small subset of the large population of the market you are present in. Not everyone in the market will be interested in your product. So why would you spend your time and money to tell about your products to them? And this is where the need for looking for an appropriate target audience/ target market comes. 

Target market is a subset of the larger set of population that may be interested in your product be it because of the similarity between their interest and the product you are offering, may be its because of their need and the ability of your product to fulfill the same. For example, an educational portal will have its target market as school students, college students, teachers, institutes, might be readers etc. Now here all these people are looking for some educational information and that is the Point of Parity. You are offering something which is of interest to them and hence they become their target market.

     Now once your target market is set, you need to step forward for something that is called market segmentation. Target market may be a subset of a large population but it itself is large enough with varying needs, requirements, desire, mentality, age, groups, region etc. and they all will be looking on for value with different perspectives. Market segmentation is the solution to this particular problem which divides your target market into further smaller groups on the basis of one of the factors like demographics, psycho-graphics or any other suitable factor. For example, in the above case the target audience can be segmented based on the field of education, interest. And hence segments can be formed such as IT, Engineering, Finance etc.