- Market Segments & Strategies: Market segmentation is as “the process of dividing the large and diverse mass market into subsets of consumers who share common needs, characteristics, or behaviors, and then targeting one or more of those segments with a distinct marketing mix.” (Kardes, F., Cronley, M., & Cline, T., 2020). In the case of Under Armour, they relied heavily on gender-specific market segmentation, which up until 2013, generally catered to men. After the colossal failure of a marketing campaign their rival Adidas, UA decided to take the risky, but necessary steps of targeting women. The “I Will What I Want” campaign shined a spotlight on women interested in fitness, who were encouraged to be themselves. Similar to many campaigns by Dove, this was campaign that celebrated women of all kinds. It sent the message to other brands that by focusing on body positivity, beauty that is unapologetic and unashamed, and feminist beliefs, you can create a entirely new target market and build an entirely new customer base.
- Segmentation Strategies Key Points:
- 1. Consumer Preference Heterogeneity
- 2. Majority Fallacy
- 3. Sales Cost Trade-Offs
- 4. Cannibalization
- 5. Stakeholders
- New Market
- Market Segment: A new market segment that I believe would be a great target market for Under Armour to explore would be the gender-neutral market segement. The shift to gender-neutrality is very strong among the Gen Z and Millennials consumers. Among these groups, over half believe that binary gender division is outdated. According to a McKinsey study (2018), 48% of Gen Z consumers and 38% of consumers in other generations value brands that don’t classify products by gender.
- Market Segment Strategy: I would create a segmentation strategy to reach this new market segment by utilizing psychographic bases. “Psychographic based segmentation centers on customers’ lifestyles, and one of the leading lifestyle segmentation systems is the VALS System.” (Kardes., et al., 2020). For a gender-focused company like UA, this may prove to be a daunting task to strip away the ideals that have made them successful all these years, but in an ever-changing society, we either adapt, or die.
References
Francis, T., & Hoefel, F. (2018). ‘True Gen’: Generation Z and its implications for companies. McKinsey and Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/true-gen-generation-z-and-its-implications-for-companies.
Kardes, F., Cronley, M., & Cline, T. (2020). Consumer Behavior (2nd Edition). Cengage Learning US. https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781305161689
Prokopets, E. (2022). Gender-Neutral Marketing: It’s More Than A Trend. Latana.com. https://latana.com/post/three-brands-gender-neutral/
Saghian, M., & Murray, M. (2016). Under Armour’s Willful Digital Moves. Darden Business Publishing, University of Virginia. https://services.hbsp.harvard.edu/lti/links/content-launch