It is exciting and diverse. It is changing quickly. It relies on the weather, uses an incredible

Table 4.1.1.
Characteristics of product-driven, sales-driven, and market-driven organizations

very seriously. Market-driven firms invest in market research to better understand their customers, then use the information generated to guide decision making. These are agribusiness firms that are focused on building a long-term relationship with their targeted customers and firms that are willing to make some short-run sacrifices to do this. This focus on the right relationship with customers becomes the overarching goal for the market-driven organization. Some other key differences between product/sales driven firms and market driven firms are summarized in Table. The remainder of this chapter focuses on the keys to building a market driven strategy.
Like assessing the marketplace, such an internal evaluation typically involves a careful review of the firm’s entire operation. Some of the key questions to be asked are shown in Table. Making an objective evaluation can be a challenge. It is easy to be biased when assessing the firm’s operation. Securing outside feedback is very important here. Many of
Market segmentation groups customers into segments or categories according to some set of characteristics. Here, the agribusiness manager is interested in developing groups of customers that respond in a similar fashion to a given offer. These groups are called market segments, target markets, or market niches. By recognizing the common characteristics, needs, or buying motives of each unique segment in the total market, an agribusiness can design specialized marketing strategies that may appeal to the particular segments it wants to serve. This idea is illustrated in Figures 8 and Figure 9 shows the “market” for a particular farm input as viewed by a firm using a mass market strategy. Here, the firm takes one offering to the entire market, a firm using market segmentation has identified four distinct groups or segments in the market, and the shading indicates that this firm has chosen to focus their marketing resources on two of the four segments.