Niche Marketing: Tailoring the Goods as Well as the Pitch

Many of the posts on this blog have talked about segmented markets, core customers from specific demographics, and good marketing design that speaks to the right audience. Smart companies develop or streamline their products for the needs of that key group, often with good PR that travels over and beyond the dream demographic. But sometimes companies have to be pushed to recognize that they’re missing out on potential sales. Ten years ago the Wall Street Journal noted that some companies were beginning to notice that people with disabilities were an important market with some disposable income. According to Suzanne Robitaille, approximately 54 million adults-- one in five Americans -- have a physical or mental disability. She argues that “People with disabilities have a combined income of more than a trillion dollars -- and are willing to spend it on products and technologies that make their lives more productive…Brands that ignore the needs of this group relinquish an opportunity to reach this growing demographic.”

Indeed, American Airlines just announced that it will run a contest for advertisements featuring people with disabilities, promoting both its own efforts to create services that are accessible while highlighting other companies too. The winners receive free advertising on the airline's in-flight network.

As new technologies make access to a wider world possible for everyone, creating devices that are user-friendly for people with physical challenges has not been as much of a high priority as it could be. And that represents a loss of core customers. Recently, the state of Massachusetts and the National Federation for the Blind, (which successfully sued Target) went after Apple for the inaccessibility of iTunes products. In response, Apple will rework iTunes U, the college and university online course content section of the iTunes music store and make it "fully accessible to the blind" by the end of the year. At the same time, as Robitaille points out in her ablebody blog, Apple has produced some assisted technologies, such as an iPhone app that provides a talking email keyboard and another that uploads glucose readings from connected blood glucose to the iPhone, which allows diabetes patients to track blood sugar levels over the course of the day. While creating specialty products for a niche market is a tried and true formula, technology companies also need to face the fact that their main products may be used by different groups in profoundly different ways. The product itself -- as well as the pitch -- needs to take that into account. For example, many of the applications designed for people with disabilities are also more user-friendly for older consumers who might find regular interfaces difficult to navigate.

For a positive example, note the marketing news about Panasonic's Toughbook laptops which have "carved out a niche among people who use computers under the most trying circumstances -- think utility linemen, the military, construction workers -- but in this age of belt-tightening, marketing executives with the brand are thinking the brand's durability message may play to a wider audience." The success of designing and then selling to that specific market has encouraged Panasonic to create a multi-platform campaign of television, web-based, print, and out-of-home ads that considers how other users might also want a more resiliant laptop. The new campaign, which carries the theme "Toughbooks for a tough world,” is being promoted in airports and on shows like "CNN in the Morning" to capture the business traveler who might not realize the advantages of a more resilient product. In the same way that sportswear and hiking gear morphs into business and street wear, the "tested under extreme circumstances" approach entices users from a slightly different occupational group. Indeed, I suspect Panasonic has not yet exploited the full extent of its crossover from successful niche sales to larger markets. One of its Toughbooks is geared towards doctors -- another group that can appear authoritative or innovative to "regular" consumers. Toughbook provides the "first fully-rugged mobile clinical assistant (MCA), will be one of its many mobile healthcare solutions innovative engineering, resulting from its own proprietary global healthcare industry research and Intel’s mobile clinical assistant (MCA) reference design. The device improves workflow and eases clinical loads for doctors and nurses, helping healthcare organizations maximize efficiency and reduce errors... [It] is a secure and intuitive platform for barcode medication administration (BCMA), vitals capture and electronic medical records (EMR) capture and review." Given the popularity of hospital-based on television, philanthropic work in the field by Doctors without Borders, and concerns about emergency medical response in disasters, Panasonic might also consider how to promote its product even more.

Remodel your living space, Apple style

I saw this article at Advertising Lab and had to share: apparently the folks at oobject investigated a number of the products in-use at many Apple stores, tracked down the suppliers that made them, and put together a list on the web for those of us with slightly less free time :) If you're planning to remodel soon and have tastes that skew towards neo-Scandinavian minimalism, this might be a good source of ideas for you.

Of course, it's also possible that just a few of those Baleri Italia chairs will be enough to break the bank :)

Tags: apple, visual merchandising, store design

The genius behind Apple's "Genius Bar"

Ever since Apple opened its first retail store just a few short years ago, there have been pundits heralding the demise of the fabulously stylish (still?) tech company. After all, retail presences had killed so many other, bigger computer firms in the past, so what made Apple unique?

Well, the answer, of course, is the focus on the customer experience. What lots of people failed to realize was that a company as obsessed with the user interface as Apple had probably figured out that that same attention to detail would be required to deliver a positive, memorable bricks-and-mortar shopping experience.

Fast-forward to late 2007 and what do we see? Over 200 Apple stores in operation around the world, massive growth on tap, fat margins, a wide selection of (still?) trendy products, and a stock price that shows no signs of coming down soon. But not content with their successes so far, Apple figured that their admittedly-great retail experience still has some room for improvement.

Thus I was pleased to see this announcement at Yahoo noting that the company would be putting more of a focus on their "geniuses" -- Store employees who are filled with Apple knowledge and ready to help, whether it's showing how to use a new iPod or figuring out what's wrong with a Mac. Where other stores routinely have difficulty getting their staff to connect with shoppers, Apple actually asks you to go online and book time with geniuses before making your way to a store.

So let's look at what Apple has done: They've built a retail experience around having great staff. They hired great staff. Sure enough, people don't treat the great staff like a bunch of lepers or used car salespeople. In fact, customers now come to the stores specifically because of the staff in many cases. In response, Apple's latest store has a Genius bar capable of handling up to 50 shoppers at once, and they've added a "personal shopper" service.

While Apple's product line and core demographic lends itself particularly well to guided selling and in-house support, it doesn't seem like the success of Apple's geniuses should be limited to that one company, or even the home/personal electronics industry. There are plenty of other stores that I go to where the staff is truly excellent -- they're knowledgeable, friendly, courteous, and they know when to intrude and when not to. But it seems like there are few other brands who have made great products, great service, great stores a core part of their marketing strategy. Down here in Florida, the Publix grocery chain is trying. They've been big on service since their inception, but only recently have they started focusing on the overall store experience more. I know people are in love with Trader Joe's, and they certainly have a strong reputation, but I haven't shopped there enough myself. Wholefoods has a solid brand, and their stores are pretty to look at, but while free cheese and cracker samples are nice, I haven't found the staff to be up to snuff on many occasions, and their store layouts leave a lot to be desired.

So who else is out there? What other brands offer solid store experiences backed up with first-rate staff bent on making shoppers feel good? I'm sure there are lots of local guys, but are there any other national (or even regional) guys making this a priority right now?

Tags: store experience, apple