IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pae/wpaper/07-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Market Segmentation Practices Of Retail Crop Input Firms

Author

Listed:
  • Jay Akridge
  • Mike Boehlje
  • Allan Gray
  • Aaron Reimer

    (Department of Agricultural Economics, College of Agriculture, Purdue University)

Abstract

While market segmentation and the associated idea of target marketing are not new, there are questions about how the strategy of market segmentation and target marketing is being used in retail agribusiness firms. Previous research has demonstrated that distinct groups of farmers/customers exist (Alexander). However, retail crop input firms tend to be of modest size and are geographically bound. Both lack of resources and confinement to a specific geographic market present challenges for successful implementation of a market segmentation/target marketing strategy (Stolp). In this study, market segmentation/target marketing practices were explored in two types of crop input retailers: independently owned and operated firms (9 firms) and agricultural cooperatives (11 firms). A number of questions related to market segmentation/target marketing strategy were assessed via a web-based survey and telephone interviews. Referencing Best's seven-step framework, market segmentation is compared and contrasted by firm type; gaps in market segmentation strategy execution are identified; and challenges to implementing a market segmentation strategy are considered. Results show that market segmentation/target marketing was employed by 85% of the crop input retailers in the sample. Key gaps identified in market segmentation strategy execution include measuring market segment attractiveness; evaluating market segment profitability; developing a product-price positioning strategy for a tailored offering; expanding the positioning strategy to include promotional and sales elements of the marketing-mix; and evaluating the progress/success with each target market segment. Addressing these key gaps will aid industry professionals as they work to serve the needs of a continuously evolving farmer/customer base.

Suggested Citation

  • Jay Akridge & Mike Boehlje & Allan Gray & Aaron Reimer, 2007. "Market Segmentation Practices Of Retail Crop Input Firms," Working Papers 07-03, Purdue University, College of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:pae:wpaper:07-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/bitstream/6713/2/sp070003.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gloy, Brent A. & Akridge, Jay T., 1999. "Segmenting The Commercial Producer Market For Agricultural Inputs," 1999 Annual meeting, August 8-11, Nashville, TN 21592, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    2. Gloy, Brent A. & Akridge, Jay T., 1999. "Segmenting The Commercial Producer Marketplace For Agricultural Inputs," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 2(2), pages 1-19.
    3. Alexander, Corinne E. & Wilson, Christine A. & Foley, Daniel H., 2005. "Agricultural Input Market Segments: Who Is Buying What?," Journal of Agribusiness, Agricultural Economics Association of Georgia, vol. 23(2), pages 1-20.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Murekezi, Abdoul & Oparinde, Adewale & Birol, Ekin, 2017. "Consumer market segments for biofortified iron beans in Rwanda: Evidence from a hedonic testing study," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 35-49.
    2. Nathanael M. Thompson & Courtney Bir & Nicole J. Olynk Widmar, 2019. "Farmer perceptions of risk in 2017," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(2), pages 182-199, April.
    3. Feeney, Roberto & Berardi, Valeria, 2013. "Seed Market Segmentation: How Do Argentine Farmers Buy Their Expendable Inputs?," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 16(1), pages 1-24, February.
    4. Zainuri, Ahmad & Wardhono, A. & Sutomo & Ridjal, J. A., 2015. "Competitiveness Improvement Strategy of Soybean Commodity: Study of Food Security in East Java - Indonesia," AGRIS on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Economics and Management, vol. 7(3), pages 1-8, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schwering, Dorothee Schulze & Hollenbeck, Anna & Krone, Saskia & Spiller, Achim & Lemken, Dominic, 2022. "Crop protection market segmentation: relationship between buyer segments and the use of digital sales channels," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 25(4), September.
    2. Murekezi, Abdoul & Oparinde, Adewale & Birol, Ekin, 2017. "Consumer market segments for biofortified iron beans in Rwanda: Evidence from a hedonic testing study," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 35-49.
    3. Roucan-Kane, Maud & Alexander, Corinne E. & Boehlje, Michael & Downey, W. Scott & Gray, Allan W., 2011. "Large Commercial Producer Market Segments for Agricultural Capital Equipment," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 14(4), pages 1-18, November.
    4. Annabell Franz & Christian Schaper & Achim Spiller & Ludwig Theuvsen, 2010. "Geschäftsbeziehungen zwischen Landwirten und Lohnunternehmen: Ergebnisse einer empirischen Analyse," Journal of Socio-Economics in Agriculture (Until 2015: Yearbook of Socioeconomics in Agriculture), Swiss Society for Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, vol. 3(1), pages 195-230.
    5. Gloy, Brent A. & Akridge, Jay T., 2000. "Computer And Internet Adoption On Large U.S. Farms," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 3(3), pages 1-16.
    6. Feeney, Roberto & Berardi, Valeria, 2013. "Seed Market Segmentation: How Do Argentine Farmers Buy Their Expendable Inputs?," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 16(1), pages 1-24, February.
    7. Maria José Palma Lampreia DOS SANTOS, 2013. "Segmenting farms in European Union," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 59(2), pages 49-57.
    8. Borchers, Bryce & Roucan-Kane, Maud & Alexander, Corinne E. & Boehlje, Michael & Downey, W. Scott & Gray, Allan W., 2012. "How Large Commercial Producers Choose Input Suppliers: Expendable Products from Seed to Animal Health," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 15(2), pages 1-20, May.
    9. Alexander, Corinne E. & Wilson, Christine A. & Foley, Daniel H., 2004. "Agricultural Input Market Segments: Who Is Buying?," 2004 Annual meeting, August 1-4, Denver, CO 19997, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    10. Matthew Gorton & John White & Svetlana Chernyshova & Alexander Skripnik & Tatiana Vinichenko & Mikhail Dumitrasco & Galina Soltan, 2003. "The reconfiguration of post-Soviet food industries: Evidence from Ukraine and Moldova," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(4), pages 409-424.
    11. Maud Roucan‐Kane & Corinne Alexander & Michael D. Boehlje & Scott W. Downey & Allan W. Gray, 2010. "Agricultural financial market segments," Agricultural Finance Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 70(2), pages 231-244, August.
    12. Bensemann, Jessica & Shadbolt, Nicola, 2015. "Farmers’ Choice of Marketing Strategy: A Study of New Zealand Lamb Producers," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 18(3), pages 1-33, September.
    13. Gloy, Brent A. & Akridge, Jay T. & Whipker, Linda D., 2000. "Sources Of Information For Commercial Farms: Usefulness Of Media And Personal Sources," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 3(2), pages 1-16.
    14. Stark, Christopher E. & Moss, Leeann E. & Hahn, David E., 2002. "Farm Business Goals And Competitive Advantage," 2002 Annual meeting, July 28-31, Long Beach, CA 19618, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    15. Pradeep Kumar Mohanty & N. Senthil Kumar, 2017. "Measuring farmer’s satisfaction and brand loyalty toward Indian fertilizer brands using DEA," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 24(5), pages 467-488, October.
    16. Jay T. Akridge, 2003. "E-Business in the Agricultural Input Industries," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 25(1), pages 3-13.
    17. Nathanael M. Thompson & Courtney Bir & Nicole J. Olynk Widmar, 2019. "Farmer perceptions of risk in 2017," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(2), pages 182-199, April.
    18. Hedge, Kendra M. & Yeager, Elizabeth A., 2014. "Producer Perceptions of Risk and Time," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 170299, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    19. Joseph I Amuka & Robinson I Nduaguba & Anthony O Agu & Chinasa Urama & Bernadette C Onah, 2020. "Segmentation in Agriculture and Farmers’ Productivity: Evidence from Survey of Poultry Farms," Asian Journal of Social Sciences and Management Studies, Asian Online Journal Publishing Group, vol. 7(1), pages 53-57.
    20. Gloy, Brent A. & Akridge, Jay T. & Whipker, Linda D., 2000. "The Usefulness And Influence Of Information Sources On Commercial Farms," 2000 Annual meeting, July 30-August 2, Tampa, FL 21735, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    market segmentation; target marketing; crop inputs; distribution channel; retailer;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q10 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - General
    • Q13 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Markets and Marketing; Cooperatives; Agribusiness

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pae:wpaper:07-03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Debby Weber (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dapurus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.