Ch 8 Segmentation and Targeting Markets

Airbnb’s users are divided in two markets segmentations.


People that are looking for places and people that are willing to rent out theirs.

Travelers: This market segment involves mostly people that wants to do tourism. Travelers sometimes, have different purposes rather than just exploring new cities. The reasons could be many, but definitely all of them share a need to stay over somewhere else than home.

Hosts: These include owners or renters who are willing to rent out their places. The reasons vary as well. They might want to make some money out of an unoccupied space or simply they just want to meet interest pople. Whatever the reason is, all hosts are looking to list their current place on Airbnb.

Both -- travelers and hosts, are the main target market of Airbnb. 

TARGETING

We know that a lot of companies choose to focus their marketing strategy in one segmented marketing at a time. Airbnb in the other hand, is able to deal with both at once. The company’s model follows a structure where both marketing segments complement each other. Like the hotel industry for example, they need to have a location where to host people and these travelers are aware of hostels and hotels existence. This is almost the same case of Airbnb because they shared most of the common interests and characteristics of travelers that would stay in a average hotel. However, Airbnb is different from average hostels and hotels. Airbnb competitive advantage is the variety of rental choices and prices. In addition, these places are also Airbnb user’s (hosts) homes.
To sum up, both-- hosts and guests need each other in order to follow Airbnb’s marketing concept.

Positioning

Here is what Airbnb users perceive from the product.

From a host perceptive:

• Making money:People get the opportunity to increase their income when renting out their rooms. By renting a place per night, the monthly average price, is two or even three times more of what the rent actually costs.
• Competition winner: Luckily there is not so much out there. Airbnb relies on the big amount of feedback from users. Other rental websites like“ Couchsurf” does not have the popularity of Airbnb.

From a guest perceptive

• Variety of prices: With a “low from high” price option in the web site, guest get to choose their favorite match in a wide range of costs.
• Variety of Places: From couches to Islands and castles, guests are able to explore dreamlands of destinations listed in the web site.
• Amenities: Not every hotel offers you a jet ride with a personal tourist included. Tennis courts, pools, bikes, etc are part of the nice perks of airbnb lists.