Is there a choice?!

While market segmentation creates more choices, I believe that more choices are good for the business and for the consumer. I don’t believe consumers are confused by multiple options. The more selections available, the better for the consumer. It lets the business tailor the products and services for the consumer, creating an individualized selling approach, “the key to successful product differentiation and market segmentation strategies is finding the ideal balance between satisfying a customer’s individual wants and achieving organizational synergy…”, as Kerin and Hartley mentioned in their book “Marketing: The Core”.

With the creation of the Internet, consumers’ choices multiplied dramatically. And marketers’ choices on how to reach the consumers also increased. They were able to look at demographic, geographic, behavioral and psychographic, as Kerin said. “Today’s Internet ordering and flexible manufacturing and marketing processes have made mass customization possible…”. In this weekly Blog we are going to look into Seamless, the online food ordering service.

Seamless was started in 1999 and by 2005 it was first offered to customers for use and to partner with different restaurants. In 2013 it merged with GrubHub and currently it partnered with over 12,000 restaurants and has over 2 million users in the USA and UK.

Seamless leverages market segmentation to their advantage by using geographic (the cities that it operates in), behavioral (past UX) and demographic (tech savvy users). The company also segmented their own App by differentiating choices by different cuisines, such as Japanese versus Thai. The company reaches out to customers through variety of different tools, like e-mails and offering discounts. As Keller said in the book “Strategic Brand Management”, “E-mail is one of the main tools permission marketers employ, even though social media is increasingly being used to send information to interested prospects.” The company sends e-mails targeting specific customers which have ordered from it before, at a certain time about certain dishes, to encourage them to repeat the order.

Seamless also employs different social media platforms, such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, etc. All their social media is very effective, since the company engages prospective customers with pictures of delicious food, which entices them to order over and over again. The company’s message remains consistent across all the social media platforms, where customers share their experience and leaving reviews that boost the word of mouth effect. To make the App even more customer friendly, Seamless implemented the Apple Pay feature, so the customer can pay through their Apple account instead of a credit card, creating Seamless experience “true seamless”. Customers can also re — order previous meals and check the delivery status on their Apple watches.

In conclusion, I believe that choices help grow businesses, as you can see from the Seamless example of success, through its market segmentation, how the company attracts new leads and retains customer attention.