Today I had an interesting discussion on choosing the right niche or the Single Target Market that I keep mentioning with one of my colleagues and she was not convinced on my logic. So I will throw this open to your comments. I will give my logic and my colleagues logic. In marketing there’s nothing right or wrong. The market decides. You try to go with as much common sense and logic.

We will discuss it by using an analogy of the Indian automotive market. The Indian passenger transport market for personal travel is primarily broken down into two wheelers and four wheelers. The two wheelers are scooters and motorcycles and then you have cars which start from 800CC engines all the way to the Bentley and Rolls Royce.

Suppose the product we have is a 1000CC engine car which is more expensive than the 800CC car (not our product) by almost 40%-100% and is more expensive than the general two wheeler by about 10 times.

So who should be the customer you should target. Someone who has an existing 800CC car and wants to upgrade in life because the car has got old or should we target the person who owns a scooter or a motorcycle and wants to upgrade in life because the family has grown and they can now afford to buy a car.

My suggestion would be to look at the person who already has a 800CC car and suggest our product as an additional car or an upgrade from the old car. My colleague’s logic was that there’s a much larger market which is driving two wheelers and if we can convince them to move to our product rather than to the 800CC car we would be able to target a much larger market even though it will be a tougher sale to crack

I would love to hear your comments below on what you think we should do out of the two options or if you can think of a third option.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!