Segmenting, Targeting, Positioning – part 1

In order for a product or company to truly succeed it is important to closely target a specific part of the market. Being a startup, Ambro faces a specific challenge here. In this post we will try to define on which segment Ambro should focus its marketing powers.

First of all, we believe that Ambro should start with targeting only one segment at first – entering a new market, especially when only launching the product for the first time, may be rather difficult if two differing segments are targeted at once. Our interest lies in the United States (we’ll specify the reasons in the later posts). If we examine this market, we soon find that no similar product actually exists. The closest competitor to Ambro might be Soylent, which operates in the supplement food market (to be examined in the later posts). In the previous post, we found out that Ambro is inspired upon this product, and therefore it may be that FDA (US Food & Drug Administration) will classify it as a Dietary Supplement. However, the essence of Ambro and the reason for its existence is that it offers a replacement for food – therefore, Ambro aims at creating the market of organic food replacements.

VALS - tool for segmentation

In order to define segments for the US market we turn to VALS, a tool developed for segmenting US adults into eight distinct types—or mindsets—using a specific set of psychological traits and key demographics that drive consumer behavior. It uses both motivations and resources of the consumer in order to understand how he expresses himself in the marketplace.

Although VALS indentifies eight distinct types, we believe the following two to appeal most to the product image of Ambro:

• Innovators: Innovators are change leaders and are the most receptive to new ideas and technologies. Ambro is a new product that would enter a yet non-existent market. Therefore it is most likely that it will appeal highly to innovators. In its marketing communication Ambro should focus on communicating the innovativeness of the product.
• Achievers:  Because of their busy lives, Achievers are often interested in a variety of time-saving devices. Since Ambro promotes itself as a quick substitute for dinner during busy periods, we believe it appeals greatly to achievers as well. Achievers may prove to be the most durable target group since their lives will continue to be busy while innovators might turn their backs to the product after an (unsatisfactionary) early adaption. 

In our interview with Tapio Melgin he identified some other segmentation characteristics. Ambro wants to focus on 20-40 year old people with academic education, with purchasing power and who are interested in nutrition. This description still would fit the so-called Achievers. In order to make it more concrete, the best segment for Ambro to target would be:

• Men and women in extremely busy jobs, such as investment bankers or lawyers. These people often want to eat healthy as they tend to be perfectionists in all areas of life; Ambro would help them to eat well and save time.

According to Tapio, this segment indeed is their target segment. Another target segment that Ambro indentifies is: 

• Fitness and Yoga enthusiast women of 20-40 years. These women are often very interested in healthy eating. 

This segment is more fractioned, because the age as well as the education level of yoga practitioners varies greatly. Surely, a great lot of them might be interested in balanced and healthy eating next to a balanced and healthy body (e.g. superfood enthusiastics). However, this segment also includes those who don’t know much about nutrition initially (e.g. which vitamins are important to get). The segment might need some education but may prove highly potential. Still, we would advice Ambro though to only focus on it after a succesful initial launch of Ambro in the US.

The ultimate goal is for the users to become either daily or occasional users (using only a few times a week). Ambro Group does not aim at people living only of Ambro, as the founders are also fans of good dinners. Instead, “Ambro is for the times food needs to work around you”.