How does Kinder segment its markets?

Different Kinder products evolve different consumer buying behaviour as well as product requirements. Consumers and organisations all have different needs in products and services, different abilities to buy those products as well as willing and authorities. Therefore, taking this into account, organisations sometimes decide to focus on a specific target group. The varying characteristics, needs, wants and interests mean that there are a few markets where a single product is satisfactory for all. This is called market segmentation.

Kinder Surprise is aimed for the child population mainly. There is, however, an older population which can purchase these products as well, but the main age of focus is 3-12 year olds. Those who buy the products for those without the ability of the buying power are parents. Thus, we can also say that Kinder Surprise is targeted to both children and their parents. The idea of the advertisement campaigns is to target children, however packaging, for example (multipacks, etc.) can target their parents (whole families). Kinder Surprise are sometimes divided by gender: pink packaging stands for girls, and the blue one for boys. This is a demographic segmentation. The segmentation variables used here are the following: age, gender, ethnicity, family size.

The packaging of Kinder Surprise on normal days is different from that of the Christmas. Therefore, behavioural segmentation is used in order to attract more customers by reaching different needs. Brand loyalty and volume usage are the variables for this segment.

Psychographic segmentation is also applied in a sense that Kinder chooses which toys to put inside a Kinder Surprise following the recent trends on cartoons children watch, or characters that are popular. Existence of different lifestyles in different countries and personality attributes are the variables of this segment.

As already mentioned before, the set of toys is always changed as well as packaging because of such reasons as constantly changing trends or during the period of holidays (Christmas holidays, Easter, New Year’s Eve, etc.) Cultures differ by a geographical location, therefore trends are likely to change as well. For instance, Easter is a quite important holiday in Italy, a lot of attention is paid to the development of the products particularly in that area than in any other country. Same applies to New Year’s Eve in Russia. Kinder also segments by geographical locations. Region, climate and market density are the most important variables for this segment, according to which the project is marketed. Dependant on the climate, Kinder Surprise is substituted in hotter countries by Kinder Joy.

Taking into account Kinder Surprise is targeted to many markets, designing more than one promotional message (for children and their parents), it can be concluded, Kinder uses differentiated segmentation targeting strategy to market the product. As an example, on the picture below it says “Create a personalised storybook with your child as the star”This piece on the webpage of Kinder is targeted to children’s parents, to encourage them use Kinder products in order to create a book for their own children. Differentiated marketing strategy is when a company creates campaigns that appeal to at least two market segments or target groups. What is also important, differentiated marketing strategies can target more than two segments, as Kinder Surprise does: demographic, behavioural, psychographic, geographical.

 

I will now introduce you to another term, which is brand positioning. It is about organisations and their desire on the way of looking into customer’s eyes. For example, do customer view you as a quality brand? Or a firm selling unique, valuable products? Positioning is an establishment of a brand in relation to the other ones in the perception of consumers. The position strategy that Kinder has includes both informational (advertising when physical information about the product is given) and transformational (mentions the benefits for the consumer). The version of both strategies combined is called two-sided positioning . According to, “Kinder is positioning itself by representing the benefits for both parent and child”.

There are some cases when companies focus on the wrong segments, the result of which could be an enormous loss of money, incapability of reaching the required target group, severe competition.  Therefore, it is essential for the chosen segments to be effective.

There are main requirements/criteria for a market segment. These are the criteria which apply to Kinder Surprise:

• Homogeneous (consumers allocated to each segment should be similar in some relevant way) – the consumers are similar because they might come from the same family (parents and children), their needs don’t differ much.
• Measurable (data should be available to measure the size of the market segment  – the data must be available in research agencies such as Euromonitor, etc. The data is measurable and includes size, purchasing power, profiles of segments.
• Substantial – the focus of the product is concentrated on a stable customer group. Segments of Kinder Surprise are large and profitable enough to serve.
• Accessible – each market segment is easy to communicate and reach. Kinder Surprise is sold in almost every supermarket/hypermarket/duty free shops, etc. The target groups are reached using TV commercials. The target markets of Kinder Surprise are effectively reached and served.
• Actionable/practical (implementing a distinctive marketing mix for each market segment) – this applies to the fact that Kinder packaging can be changed according to gender or holidays in a country. Effective programs are designed to attract markets Kinder targets.