Marketing Essay Sample: New Product to the Market: Cheap Group Holiday Safari Travel

It is the dream of many Americans to travel overseas, especially to Africa for a game drive holiday in the Savanna and to see the Big Five animals in Tanzania, Kenya, or South Africa. However, the trips are expensive and out of reach of Many Americans as they may cost upwards of $1000 per day per person (Christie, Christie, Fernandes, Messerli, & Twining-Ward, 2014). Such trips are expensive majorly because of high-end accommodation costs and other luxurious additions that if done with, can significantly reduce the cost incurred by holiday goers. It is with this reasoning that a new product targeting people willing to pay less than $3000 for a five-day Safari in Africa will be introduced.

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Segmenting, Targeting, and Positioning

In marketing, segmenting, targeting, and positioning are essential processes of ensuring a business creates a unique identity and focuses on a specific segment of the market for its success. Segmenting can be defined as the process through which a company divides a market into several groups or segments based on various characteristics demographics, geographic, behavioral, or psychological factors (Kotler & Keller, 2009, p.249). Consequently, the business decides the best market to focus on and thus come up with marketing strategies that can have the best outcome in pushing the product to the identified group. On the other hand, targeting is the second step after segmentation, whereby a marketer decides the groups to focus on, and the strategies that will be used for each segment (Tanner & Raymond, 2014). An entity may target one segment or more. Further, for each segment, a business can use undifferentiated where similar offers are made to each group or differentiated marketing where each segment is targeted with a unique marketing message. Lastly, positioning is the last step in market segmentation and relates to how a business wants its customers to perceive it (Kotler & Keller, 2009). In the travel industry, a business may seek to position itself as luxurious or affordable and so on.

Segmentation and Targeting Choices for the Travel Business

In the travel and holidays industry, many businesses position themselves as luxurious, that target high-end clients who would like to travel to Africa and elsewhere (Christie et al., 2014). Indeed, most of the travels to Africa cost up-to to $3000 a night, and this locks out young and even older people whose income cannot afford such a holiday. Further, there is a general perception in the public that trips to Africa are expensive.

In a quest to move from the above perception in the market, the current business will segment the population based on income. In this case, the company will target people with a salary of $45,000 annually or less, especially those in their first few jobs after graduating from college, or any other person who is looking for a budget trip to Kenya, Tanzania, or South Africa.

As identified above, the target market will be those with an average annual income of $45,000, who would like to have a safari, yet the current market offering is highly prohibitive for them. Consequently, with that approach, the group will be offered an affordable rate of less $3000 safari for five days in any of the destination nations whereby the trip will ensure reduced prices are maintained through cheaper accommodation, group travel, and limiting the trip to only a few days.

The target market is attractive since many people in the United States would like to travel for a holiday overseas once or twice in their lifetime yet the costs remain prohibitively high. Furthermore, the target group is predominantly the young people whose salaries are still low, and cannot afford the current high prices that are offered in the market that seeks to target those who can afford luxurious travels.

In positioning, the focus will be on offering High-Quality Low Price packages for people who seek a budget yet memorable trip to Africa, specifically, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa. The positioning will be enabled by the fact that there are numerous camps and hotels, which offer cheap accommodation, and which will allow the holiday seekers to focus more on the game drives and other activities beyond accommodation, which seems to take up most of the costs of travel. The approach will be essential in identifying an under-served market segment, which has been ignored by many local and overseas travel companies, which have been designed to target the rich who can afford trips of $3000 up to $10,000 a day. Consequently, by offering a reduced package of costs of less $3000 for five days in Africa, it will be an essential step towards covering the needs of low-income people, who still desire to experience and go for a holiday.

Conclusion

The travel and holiday industry is majorly served by businesses that target high-end clients in the United States, who seek to travel to Africa or elsewhere for a safari. In the current business, the segment of focus will be people earning less than $45,000 annually who seek to have an affordable trip to Africa costing less than $3000. Consequently, the business will position itself as High Quality-Low Price travel organization catering to the ignored needs of the target population.

References

Christie, I., Christie, I. T., Fernandes, E., Messerli, H., & Twining-Ward, L. (2014). Tourism in Africa: Harnessing tourism for growth and improved livelihoods. World Bank Publications.

Kotler, P. & Keller, K. (2009) Marketing management (13th ed.). New York, NY: Pearson Education International.

Tanner, J. F., & Raymond, M. A. (2014). Principles of marketing (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: Flatworld Knowledge Inc.