Question

Part 3: Having a balanced and healthy lifestyle is an essential part of every person’s life. Here at “Lifestyle Gym”, we plan to promote our health fitness programs to potential customers in Bahrain.      

Based on your studies of segmentation and targeting, fill in the following table by stating each targeting strategy described in the example. (Possibilities: Mass, segmented, niche, micro)

	Examples	Targeting Strategies
	Promoting “Lifestyle Gym” as a possible life changing program for people with depression and anxiety attacks to help them overcome their health problems and live a healthy life.
	Promoting “Lifestyle Gym” as a new gym to everybody by placing adverts in widely read newspapers.
	Promoting “Lifestyle Gym” by designing customized packages catering to the needs of individual customer’s interests/requirements.
	Designing different fitness programs to cater to different customer needs by advertising different packages.

Answer 1

1. This is a Niche marketing strategy where the target audience has unique preferences and needs. In this instance the people with depression and anxiety attacks are the niche the gym is targeting. The differentiation could be based on age, gender, income group, location and in this case medical history. Another example is the marketing for electric cars, apart from the obvious benefits to the environment -  in some countries the smaller cars have been marketed as 'compacts' for niche groups such as 1) users that value the benefits of needing less parking space e.g. islands, tightly packed urban areas, and 2) users that value better maneuverability e.g. women.

2. This is a Mass marketing strategy where the entire potential customer base is targeted using a single message. The ads that will run in newspapers can be read by everyone who is part of their target audience. There is no specific customer segment or type that the ad is catered towards and so this follows the mass targeting strategy. Another example is the offer of deals on an online retail page like amazon, such as deals for mobile phones that show up at the top of the main page and are broadcast to all visitors to the site, and are not targeted to any specific customer type.

3. This is a Micro targeting strategy as it attempts to cater to the smallest of sub-sets such as individual needs. This offers a level of customisation that is very appealing to customers who value it. Customers who are currently unhappy with service elsewhere or just have not found a gym that will cater to their unique needs will try this gym in the hope of finding what they need here. e.g. pet owners might want a place to leave their pets during workouts, however this cannot be a common strategy as pets could be dogs, cats, fish, birds etc. So a dog owner who does not have a place to leave her dog can ask the gym to have someone watch her pet during her yoga class. Similarly, a bird owner might want someone to keep an eye on his birds while he spends time in the gym. This Micro strategy will attract customers who might not have access to the same service elsewhere.

4. This is Segmented targeting strategy as the gym creates different packages for different customer segments. This requires that a different marketing message be used for different segments to entice each group with unique features that are more relevant to them. The gym can offer mood-elevating package - yoga with a healthy-cooking class, or healthy morning package - tai chi breathing techniques with a juice-a-day offer. The previously defined niche in point 1 could use one or more of these packages. Users with no depression or anxiety histories could also want to take either or both of these packages. These packages therefore cater to a larger segment - people with or without depression and anxiety, but with stressful lives and wanting to become more healthy.