Power Categories

... are market segments or groups of customers that will produce the most growth for your business in the future.  These segments can be different types of product/package types or groups of similar occasions and needs that prompt customers to seek out the type of products that you sell.

Knowing this will help you prioritise your investment and innovation where it will produce the most growth.  Power Categories will bring complete clarity to you and the team about where you should be focusing your efforts. 

The Process – 3 stages

Step 1 - Define which market segments you compete in.

It is helpful to break the market down into segments that you can offer a product or service to.  Not every customer is the same and not everyone wants the same thing.  In practice some of these segmentations will be more useful than others in helping you make a decision.

We will help you develop practical market segmentation through a combination of desk research and our workshop methods.  These workshop methods are best done with “real” customers, but maybe you know enough already and we can do it with you and the business team.  Whichever approach we take the chances are we will end up with segments based on:

• Product and packaging types e.g. recipes, composition, service types
• Types of customers e.g. age, demographic status, psychographic attitudes
• Customer needs or moments when the products will help them.
• Channels of distribution where the products are sold.

Step 2 - Assess each of the segments against three important criteria which help you to determine which offer the most powerful opportunities for growth.

• Opportunity size - big, growing and profitable
• Competitive capability - competitor strength and competitive advantage
• Unfulfilled needs - gaps in the market

This work involves desk research and consultation with knowledgeable people in your business team.  If you have good market data, we will apply our PRIMARK software tool to organise the data, create the analysis and make things clear to the team.

Step 3 - Workshop phase  - Whether the preliminary research and analysis takes one day or three months, the whole thing comes together in a workshop session, where you will review the results of the analysis and agree that it does or does not make sense.  This is important to get acceptance amongst the team.

Outputs

You will receive a report on this analysis.  We find many clients like to get this as a presentation however some prefer a written report they can share around the business.  The report will also share with you the background analysis and the graphs and charts that came out of that.

This report often acts as a comprehensive review of the market.  It reveals all the important trends and because all of the data is either quantitative or gathered from authoritative figures within the business, people accept it and agree with the findings.

Because it is a Differentiate analysis you will be able to make decisions.  We design the approach to answer important business questions about how to get growth and guarantee that you will have clarity about what to do next and the support of your colleagues to implement it.

If you feel you already know what your Power Categories are, then take a look at our approach to discovering the Power Attributes that will help you to compete successfully.  Click here.

Example of snackfood segments

Prioritsation workshop  in action