ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we review the complex topics of consumer behaviour and customer expectations and then explore the principles and practice of market segmentation and target marketing. Segmentation and targeting are fundamental marketing disciplines that underpin all marketing practice. Segmentation recognizes that hospitality customers, including both organizations and consumers, are enormously varied, but they can nonetheless be clustered into groups with similar needs, wants, expectations and requirements. Targeting is based on the premise that hospitality organizations cannot hope to satisfy all potential customers, but must choose to focus their efforts on particular clusters that share broadly similar needs and wants. In doing so, they are much better placed to design, brand and deliver their services in a way that delivers enhanced customer satisfaction to the targeted customers, and compete more effectively against other providers.
