Ch. 8 - Segmenting & Targeting Markets

For the first time all semester I believe ESPN is a great example of whats being discussed this week.  Through my examination of ESPN's empire, it seems as if they're a "typical" business when it comes to segmenting and targeting their markets.

So far I've discussed most of ESPN's products that make up their product lines.  Just like a good company who dominated its market, ESPN covers almost all market segments.  What is market segments?  Market segment is a subgroup of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product needs.  ESPN is a sports broadcaster who serves sports fans wherever sports are watched, listened to, or debated.  This is why ESPN's product line covers all subgroups that share the sports characteristics in their products.

As shown above, ESPN's product line.  This illustrates ESPN's ability to position themselves in the sports news market, and extremely thorough I might add.  Probably, one of the reasons ESPN's media awareness remains at 97%.

ESPN's use of marketing segments brings us to a second reason why ESPN is a typical business who is extremely successful in segmenting and targeting their markets.  Concentrated targeting strategy.  ESPN thoroughly takes one segment of the sports news market and targets their marketing efforts in that direction to ultimately control the market as a whole.  Once again, examine the picture above.  Take ESPN mobile as a example.  ESPN mobile provides an accurate and convenient way to stay up to date on all your sports needs, especially for those business oriented males who are always on the run and have very few time to stay in touch with their favorite team.  Or try ESPN radio, ESPN radio is broadcasted locally in your geographic region which allows a "home team" bias to take place.  This ensures your reaching your target sports fan market in that region rather than talk about the Champion New York Giants in the slums of New England. 

Lastly, another prime example of ESPN's used of segmenting and targeting their markets is their use of geodemographic segmentation.  I believe this is what ESPN does best and one of the reason they're an empire.  It goes more into detail about ESPN radio, however, ESPN takes this strategy with their business as a whole.  If you go to ESPN's website, you'll see right on the top you can pick a city.  Either, New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas or Los Angeles.  In order to remain a top competitor in the sports broadcasting realm, ESPN can't just broadcast generic sports news nation wide, even globally.  You have to cover that areas sport team niche.  Furthermore, ESPN is a global empire and serves sports fans in Latin America as well as Europe.  In these continents, soccer or futbol to their native tongue, is their primary sport of choose.  Therefore, it wouldn't make sense for ESPN to play baseball (MLB) to their sports fan.

In a nut shell, ESPN has perfected the art of segmenting and targeting their markets, which allows great success and potential for growth of the empire known as ESPN!