Beehives: How to Attract These New Market Segments
Beehives: How to Attract These New Market Segments
By the year 2025, the U.S. population is expected to increase by 25%, according to projections. This puts the nation on a growth path similar to the one experienced just after World War II, when the GIs came home and helped create the Baby Boom in the 1950s and 60s. This, and the fact that Americans are living longer, means that nearly every U.S. market segment will expand in numbers over the next 25 years.
“This [population] growth will combine with increasing diversity to create an ever-growing list of market segments,” says Josh Calder, chief editor of the Global Lifestyles project, a research venture of an Arlington, Virginia-based consultancy, Social Technologies. “I saw a professionally made bumper sticker the other day that said, ‘Proud to be Sikh and American.’ Such niches driven by ethnicity, attitudes, and interest will proliferate,” he adds.
As the population increases, traditional niche markets may become difficult for businesses to target with a single marketing strategy. The niche market of today will become a mass market in its own right tomorrow.
These new markets will naturally become segmented not only by nationality or age, but also by spending behavior and other psychographic characteristics. It’s already happening today — as traditional social groups are breaking down, people are meeting their needs for connection through communities of interest, or “beehives,” that express personal identity.
“Beehiving is the growth of tight-knit, alternative communities sharing common values and passions. Marketers must tap into beehive rituals, customs, and language to build trust and patronage,” according to Vickie Abrahamson, co-founder and executive vice president of Minneapolis-based Iconoculture, a trends consulting firm.
The growing tendency to form new, small groups that share common interests, values, activities, and passions ranges from extreme snowboarders to the Happy Camper RV Club. Beehives offer the equivalent of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for consumers, and represent the development of new marketing groups. Their common interests give marketers new and different hot buttons that can be used to attract customers more reliably than age, gender, or ethnicity alone.
How to communicate to beehives
For marketers, beehives are “good news and bad news.” The good news: Beehives help us identify new ways to connect with people, new hot buttons that people are reacting to, and a different way to slice the pie. So many tired and rehashed marketing methods fall on deaf ears that it’s exciting to think there might be something our audiences will listen to and react to in new ways. We just need to speak their language.
The bad news: It’s all new territory, and it’s all over the place. The audience you want to attract is probably fragmented into many different beehives, and you’ll have to learn how to navigate the new waters. For instance, if you’re an organizational communicator, your audience is probably not members of “Your Company Beehive” who are eagerly awaiting your next communication — instead, they could be rollerbladers, poets, NASCAR enthusiasts, etc., and you’ll have to figure out how to grab their common interests to create your own community. If you’re marketing a product, you might want to find out how different beehive segments can use it, and communicate to them individually — at least in some part of your marketing. Interesting, huh?
It does give us all food for thought. And another thing to think about: not all beehives come into being naturally — beehives can be directed, and they can be encouraged. The following is a list of some examples of beehive behavior — some of which were brought about deliberately by experience marketing.
Beehive behavior
Wristband fever
Lance Armstrong and the Wear Yellow campaign made wristbands popular, and groups everywhere started asking you to wear your passion on your wrist. Approximately 55 million people across the globe wear a LIVESTRONG™ wristband in support of people living with cancer.
Online communities
You can find a web group for almost every interest. There are online communities for owners of miniature dachshunds, Star Trek lovers, and migraine sufferers. And more than 85 groups of fans gather online just to discuss the Italian comedian, Beppe Grillo.
Belief-based products
In the Middle East, cola drinkers link taste to faith when they buy the anti-Western “Mecca Cola.” Part of its corporate philosophy is its pledge to donate 10% of its profits to fund humanitarian projects in the Palestinian territories, and another 10% to charities in the countries in which the drink is sold. This activist stance is reflected in the company slogan, which appears on all its products: “No more drinking stupid, drink with commitment!”
Just like Me
Parents of young daughters are aware of the American Girl doll phenomenon, where customers willspend hours in American Girl Place, shopping for branded dolls, clothing, books, accessories, and memorabilia. American Girl even has its own restaurant, the American Girl Café (with a four-month waiting list). Dressed in matching outfits, girls come from all over to dine with their little plastic friends.
Investing and real estate clubs
Scores of people who wouldn’t otherwise leave their homes are getting together once or twice a month to learn and talk about finance and investing. They invite speakers, have group projects, exchange tips, and go on trips together.
The bottom line buzz
All of these groups are bound together by their chosen interests and passions; that’s what makes them strong. It wasn’t necessarily that the people in them were born at a certain time, or as a certain gender, or into a certain ethnicity, or had anything else happen to them that was beyond their control — they chose these groups, they made an effort to belong. As the population continues to increase, people will continue to form new beehives, and new markets will appear that will segment by spending behavior and other psychographic characteristics. Marketers can take advantage of this trend by recognizing these beehives, taking note of how they affect spending and behavior, and tapping into what makes them tick — and then communicating to them on their own terms.
Sources:
American Demographics
Fast Company
CityGuide.aol.com
Wikipedia.org
Marcia Hoeck is president of Hoeck Associates, a leading strategic branding and marketing firm. Since 1984, Marcia has helped organizations generate millions of dollars in revenue by focusing brands and integrating communications. Read more articles and special reports at www.hoeck.net.
Market Segmentation and Research – Mr Rawat
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Ask for Help on Your Physics Assignment
Magnetism and Electricity, One dimensional and two dimensional analysis, waves and more. There are just few of the many topics in Physics which can seem like climbing Steep Mountain when stress and pressure in the need to get good grades and in managing other courses has become a reality in college.
Generally, there are two types of students and two types also of course sequences. These are physics for scientist or those who are engineer major and physics major and physics for non-scientist or those with some teaching majors, health sciences, etc.
Your instructor in Physics should be your best resources while you are in class. They have their goals of what students need to learn and do as well. Don’t be shy to tell your professor if you don’t understand the topic. You can seek out for your instructor during office hours. Make a connection with him and be involved with the material. Ask him for some clarification and the possible book references that can help you.
When you need help in areas in Physics when dealing with your Kineamtics assignment or Dynamics homework , or when you find yourself in need of Fluid mechanics help , don’t hesitate to ask help.
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Wheat Improvement and Biotechnology
Wheat Improvement and Biotechnology
Wheat is leading crop among all the cereal crops of the world.Globally it is grown on about 17 % of the total crop area, staple food of about 40 % of the world population and makes up about 20% calories, 55 % of carbohydrates and proteins in human nutrition.
Wheat production had a great increase in last four decades but now it is moving towards decline. To meet human demands by 2050, grain production needs to increase at an annual rate of 2%. There are two ways to reach this goal, either we have to increase the area of production of this crop or to increase the yield potential of our wheat varieties.Former is difficult as growing population also need more space for housing and other needs but later is possible through the use of advance scientific knowledge.
Wheat improvement is going on since its domestication. Early farmers select plants for large grains and other desirable characters.Then they started to cross desirable plants.The origins of formal wheat breeding lie in the nineteenth century, when single line varieties were created through selection of seed from a single plant noted to have desired properties. Modern wheat breeding developed in the first years of the twentieth century and was closely linked to the development of Mendelian genetics. A great improvement was the development of dwarf wheat varieties which brought a revolution in world crop production.This golden era was named as green revolution.With the growing knowledge of science advances in breeding methods are going on.
In recent years, biotechnology is emerging as one of the latest tools of agricultural research. Biotechnology involves the systematic application of biological processes for the beneficial use of mankind. One of the areas of plant biotechnology involves the delivery, integration and expression of defined genes into plant cells, which can be grown in artificial culture media to regenerate plants. Thus biotechnological approaches have the potential to complement conventional methods of breeding by reducing the time taken to produce cultivars with improved characteristics. The new tools of biotechnology not only have the potential for increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of wheat breeding programs, but also provide insights into the genetic control of key traits to be used for genetic manipulation.
Presently International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium has been established by a group of plant scientists, breeders, and growers dedicated to sequencing the wheat genome to enhance our knowledge of the structure and function of the wheat genome. By gaining increased understanding of the biology of agronomically important traits and deploying state-of-the-art molecular tools, plant scientists and breeders will be able to accelerate wheat improvement to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The Consortium is committed to ensuring that the sequence of the wheat genome and the resulting DNA-based tools are available for all to use without restriction.
Genome sequencing is not a single techniques by which we can identify the genes.It is a step by step procedure which include a number of cytogenomics molecular biology techniques. Wheat genome sequence will provide perfect markers for difficult traits, harness genetic diversity, enhance quality, increase yield in drought.
By genome sequencing we can identify the genes which shows resistance to different diseases e.g Lr19, Lr22/Lr40 has the resistance for leaf rust (a harmful disease of wheat).We can incorporate these genes in the breeding program to establish the resistant lines.
Many traits contribute to a wheat variety’s ability to cope with water limited conditions. As a result there is not just one single ‘drought-tolerance’ gene that will solely improve wheat production during drought. Specific DNA fragments that flag the location of useful genes associated with some drought adaptive traits in cereals have been identified. These ‘anonymous’ DNA markers can help plant breeders quickly and easily determine if a new wheat breeding line has the desired gene in it and hence will exhibit the desired drought adaptive trait Only a small number of DNA markers are being used for drought adaptive traits, however many more are in the pipeline. They are being evaluated in a broad range of plant material to determine whether they can be used in a cost effective manner in our wheat breeding programs.
The use of sequencing information of the wheat genome will result ultimately in healthier and more nutritious food that could lead to vast improvements in human and animal health.The required goal of increasing yield of wheat can only be reached by incorporation of advance technology in crop improvement program.
SBT from IIT-Bombay is an amazing technology which uses ecological processes to handle wide range of wastes at low costs. This video shows SBT application for STP (Sewage Treatment Plant). The possibilities are enormous – closing the water cycle and many others in nature.
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