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Also known as a marketing profile, a market profile is a summary of the essential characteristics that define a particular market. While the scope of this type of profile will vary slightly depending on the type of market being considered, a lot of essential information is often included. Businesses use market profiles to identify specific groups of potential consumers, assess their status compared to other businesses offering similar goods and services, or to assess the feasibility of launching a new product in a specific location.
One of the main factors of any market profile is to create a professional image of the ideal client. This often includes defining the age and gender of people who are likely to be attracted to a particular product. Sometimes factors such as ethnicity, race, geographic location, orientation, or religious preference can also play a role in developing this type of market profile. It is not uncommon for income level to also be included in the creation of this type of profile.
For example, a company that produces lawn and garden equipment may conclude that the customer most likely to purchase a particular lawn and garden implement from its product line will be a male over the age of fifty. This ideal consumer will also live in a suburban area, have a middle-class income, and enjoy gardening as a weekend project. If this is the consumer that the research indicates is most likely to purchase the implement, the marketing campaign will be designed with the goal of attracting customers who meet this market profile.
A market profile does not have to be focused on one customer. The profiling approach can also be applied to assess competition in a given market. Here, the idea is to determine whether a competitor’s product line is likely to appeal to the same general types of consumers. In that case, the analysis will determine which of the two companies is positioned to capture the most interested consumer groups, generally by looking at retail patterns in recent years. Here, the idea is to strengthen the presence of a certain company within a sector, and allow it, at least, to gain a greater market share.
The market profiling process can be an assessment of the overall market, involving both elements of typical buyer information along with typical competitor information. The idea is to take this data, relate it to the general economic information and determine how to promote the products offered by the company in the current economic context. With this approach, consumer spending projections take into account factors such as the current prices of goods and services, the rate of production among major competitors in the market, and whether the economy as a whole is currently in a state of inflation or recession. . Such a profile makes it easy to adjust future production to meet forecast demand and thus maximize the potential for the business to remain profitable.