The Fashion Channel Stumbling on Success, Shotgun Approach Wont Last Forever

The assigned readings of the Fashion Channel case and the reading on "market segmentation, target market selection, and positioning" sort of gave us both the theory and concrete example of how to go about figuring out who we're after, how we get to them and how to solve the problem they're looking to solve in the first place.

The Fashion Channel had initial success after a couple of years of simply "stumbling on success".  I find it amazing that they had no idea who their target market was and they had almost zero data on their viewership profile.  Sure they knew that ladies this age to that age watched the show but for a company like the Fashion Channel to not know their target market and as a result not have a positioning strategy just shows us how much more they could have done if they know exactly who they're after.

The reading gives a very clear and concise way of figuring out how one can go about slicing up the huge market into bite sized pieces so we can sift through to figure out who exactly is out there.  Once the market is diced up, whether it be vie segmentation via "benefits sought" or "observable characteristic" at the very least its a tad bit more manageable from this point forward.  I do think that both forms of segmentation should be carried out just so the company knows what people are looking for (which may be a little more up in the clouds) and on a more practical note, what can be observed.  It may be difficult to truly know what benefits our potential customers may seek, but it sure is more viable to segment from behavior exhibited and displayed.

Once we know how things are sliced up we can then decide who to hit and how they want to hit them.  Its very difficult to hit something that you can't see, but as the Fashion Channel showed, it can be done.  In the same vein, we can also see that even if FC did have initial success via the shotgun or fish net approach, it was unable to sustain the luck forever with CNN and Lifetime breathing down their neck.  Its much easier to build it if you know what they want to be built.  In short it doesnt matter if we build what we want to build or what we think the market wants us to build because in the end, it may be very far from what they desire in the first place!  Knowing who we're selling to and what exactly they want will help the group move on productively. The reading goes on to explain that once you have your target market, its easier to go about conception, production, marketing, finance and delivery.  Without a target market you're just firing your shotgun and hoping to hit something.

After knowing who we're selling to, what they want and how we can answer their needs, we have to make sure the market knows who we are and how we fit into the equation of making things work out for them.  You can have a product that fulfills their very needs but if they don't know it, they don't know that you're better than the competition then it wont really matter.  If you wanna think about it from the point of view of dating, you might like this girl, who's probably got a line out the door asking her out and you know what she wants and you know you can make her happy.  If she doesn't know then it doesn't matter.  If she doesn't know that you're better than Bob from next door then she just might choose to go out with him and not you. You have to position yourself and let her know, "tell her about it, tell her everything you feel..."

Lastly its nice to see how brand names have been able to transform to replace the nouns themselves.  In the Philippines we say Coke to refer to Soda (even Sprite is Coke would you believe), we call taking a picture Kodak and we say Magnolia to refer to ice cream.  Its a hallmark for any brand to achieve this status.