Market Segmentation

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to obtain information on what product feature or benefit the target market prefers.

Social media monitoring has become the largest resource available for information. My marketing research would begin with a search for key words associated with archery hunting on the various sites such as Instagram, Face Book and Pinterest. Many consumers share their brand loyalty openly on social media sites. Metrics such as age, geography, income and life cycle status can be easily accumulated in a relatively short amount of time. The next step would be to create or join a member forum built around the sport of bow hunting or hunting in general to gather additional information on more or less preferred brands and product reviews and cross reference them with the information from other social media sites to find patterns in location and preference that can be used to determine the marketing mix. Many consumers are willing to express themselves in a more honest and less guarded way via the anonymity provided to them by the internet. Simple interview style questioning in an informal setting such as open forums and chat rooms may yield valuable information from consumers that are already investing in some segment of the target market. Some forums and social media sites also allow the use of polling in the forums. Respondents will frequently answer polls and move on to elaborating on why they voted the way they did. This also offers valuable insight into the buying decision process used by some potential customers. This method would be one of the lowest cost methods of gathering information.

Another venue for gathering information would be to solicit the services of a well-known and respected game ranch. With the opportunity to win a private hunt, many sportsmen would be willing to fill out online surveys and provide their email addresses for future offers. The data collected in the form of scaled response questions would provide sufficient information to determine the preferences of respondents as it relates to different equipment. The consumers email could be used to gather additional information at a later date as it relates to their overall experience. Additional queries may yield enough interested respondents to form a web community centered around their common interests to gather more in depth information on brand, features or benefits of the most preferred products.