Strategy

Undifferentiated Marketing Strategy – Definition, Advantages, Disadvantages, and Examples

by Fahmina Ahmed Papia

Whether a business is selling products or services, the moment it enters the market, it needs to its marketing strategy. And marketing strategies are made focusing on the target market. The target market refers to a group or multiple groups to which a business will offer its products and services. And based on the different factors of that target group, a company prepares its marketing strategies. But sometimes it’s not necessary to have a specific target market. You can bring the mass people into your target market by focusing on the most common thing and implementing your marketing plan.

Undifferentiated Marketing Strategy : Definition, Advantages, Disadvantages, and Examples

What is Undifferentiated Marketing?

The definition says that the undifferentiated marketing refers to a strategy where a business wants to serve all kinds of target groups together by satisfying their collective needs. Here a business or company doesn’t focus on providing any unique experience to the customers. They choose a narrow product line which is most common in almost all kinds of people such as food, toiletries, cookware, gasoline, etc. In an undifferentiated marketing strategy, a business treats the target market as a homogeneous group—one type of message to every kind of person. Here a company is more interested in selling by using its brand name or positioning than a unique experience. It also helps a business to reach a wide range of people.

Advantages of Undifferentiated Marketing Strategy

Businesses doing undifferentiated marketing requires less spending. A company can use one type of marketing for mass people. While planning, it requires less investment in research and development as there’s no need to focus on something different and less time-consuming.

Undifferentiated marketing helps a business to reach mass people who couldn’t be done with a specific target market. As a result, though the price of the products/services is average, the higher selling makes a business profitable. It also makes a company less risky.

It also makes a brand more recognizable among people. Undifferentiated marketing makes it easier for companies to expand globally because of the primary value offering characteristics.

Disadvantages of Undifferentiated Marketing Strategy

Undifferentiated marketing is undoubtedly cost-effective but in the long run. Initially, the cost to reach mass people is huge, which becomes a burden for many businesses. There’s also high competition in the market. People generally don’t change brands to satisfy their basic necessitates. That’s why it gets difficult for a new brand or existing brand to shift the focus on them, as there’s not much scope to stand out from others. Also, the tendency to overgeneralize the market may become wrong for groups that may develop different tastes.

Examples of Undifferentiated Marketing Strategy with Explanation

Undifferentiated marketing is used to promote products and services that are used by almost every corner of the world and which are the basic necessities of people. Also, as the products and services are for the mass people, the marketing activities must be done in a way so that the mass people gets the same message at the same time. Here’re some examples of how a business does its undifferentiated marketing in the market using the marketing mixes.

Product and Service in Undifferentiated Marketing Strategy

A company doing undifferentiated marketing has to choose products and services that aren’t customizable and doesn’t provide any unique customer experience. In the sector of undifferentiated marketing, there’re lots of rivals, and their products and services are almost the same. Many of them gain a competitive advantage by making some small changes and stand themselves out by making some minor changes such as packaging, shape, flavors, fragrance, etc., than others in the market.

Price in Undifferentiated Marketing Strategy

Price is a vital factor in undifferentiated marketing. Businesses using undifferentiated marketing uses more or less the same price for their products and services. If you go to a superstore for buying a gallon of cooking oil, you’ll find that the cost of cooking oil produced by different brands is almost the same, maybe with a slight difference. Businesses try to put a price that is acceptable by the mass people. That’s why increasing or decreasing the rate than the market value doesn’t bring any good for businesses. Although to beat the competition companies sometimes gives discounts or other offers. But generally, the price remains the same among all of them.

Place in Undifferentiated Marketing Strategy

You’ll see that there’re certain places where there is a cluster of shops with the same products. That’s because they‘re using undifferentiated marketing. Here businesses try to be available where people expect them to be. People tend to go to places where they can have a variety of the same products, and businesses try their best to be available in those places.

Promotion in Undifferentiated Marketing Strategy

Undifferentiated marketing requires mass promotion for all kinds of people. And it gets amazingly done by television, radio, billboards, social media marketing, newspapers, etc. It doesn’t reach to people personally. Every customer receives equal treatment. As a result, the messages that are being sent through a promotion must in a way that all kinds of people understands and can engage with,

Companies that Use Undifferentiated Marketing Strategy

Many big companies use undifferentiated marketing and successfully leading around the world. Some of those are:

  • M&Ms: It’s a global candy brand that is targeted for people of all ages. The humor, message, appeal, everything is focused on mass people.
  • Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola always tries to connect itself with all kinds of people. It creates stories with its promotional activities to engage all types of people.
  • Unilever: This FMGC global company has almost all types of consumer products targeted for children to older people of every category.
  • Amazon: It’s an online e-commerce site where people can find every type of product of their needs.
  • Colgate-Palmolive: It’s a popular global brand recognized for health care, household, and personal care products for mass people.

When should a Firm Use Undifferentiated Marketing to promote its Products?

Whether a business should adopt undifferentiated marketing or not, it entirely depends on the product/services it’s going to offer and the resources it has. If a company can target mass people through its financial and production capacity, it should only enter into this market. Because initially, it gets tough for a business to manage its operation for undifferentiated marketing. It’ll be much better if a company first gather experience and increase its resource by focusing on a specific target group and after a while, start doing mass marketing. It’ll also help to use the brand hype for those undifferentiated product lines.

Bottom Line

Undifferentiated marketing helps to reach a wide range of people, but it requires a huge investment too. And marketing strategies are long-term planning. Once implemented, it’s tough to divert onto something else. That’s why it’s better to do enough research about the cost, capacity, and benefits before deciding the target market and marketing activities.

Related

References

  • https://simplicable.com/new/undifferentiated-marketing
  • https://smallbusiness.chron.com/undifferentiated-marketing-20797.html
  • https://referralrock.com/blog/differentiated-concentrated-undifferentiated-marketing/
  • https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-marketing/chapter/identification-of-target-markets/