Frito-Lay's target market is not as straightforward as other companies and that probably has everything to do with the fact that it has a much broader range of products in its manufacturing and promotional set. Frito-Lay sells a variety of products varying in price. A Frito-Lay price range is about $1to $5, depending on the size of the bag and the kind of chip being purchased. Pricing strategies used in Frito-Lay include price skimming and promotional pricing. Essentially, Frito-Lay products are more costly compared to no-name chip products. Although they may be very similar in taste to the less commonly known chips, the fact that Frito-Lay chips are higher in price promotes the notion that the Frito-Lay chips are a better quality product.
Frito-Lay promotes their product in a number ways, one of them being E-marketing. They place ads for their snacks on various gaming sites such asaddictinggames.com,armorgames.com,miniclip.com/games, and the like. Generally people playing online games range from ages 10-16, so one of Frito-Lay's target markets are preteens and teenagers online.
Frito-Lay also uses sponsorship as a means of promoting their products. Many television advertisements for Lays, Cheetos, Doritos and other Frito-Lay chips are often shown prior to the beginning of a sports game. In fact, a mere 30-second commercial can make a company an enormous amount of money. As one of the companies that sponsors the Super Bowl, Frito-Lay can attest to that. In my experience, I have made attempts to purchase Frito-Lay chips & dip during SuperBowl week and have invariably scoured supermarket shelves for them without much success.
Among the millions of NFL fans who watch the Super Bowl, many of them are bound to go out and buy Frito-Lay chips, unconsciously and consciously, after seeing the Frito-Lay commercials. For its Super Bowl promotions, the Frito-Lay target market is anyone who watches or goes to see football games, so it runs the gamut in terms of the ages to which the commercials will appeal. Adults may buy a bag of Doritos after seeing an ad, for instance, or a child who liked a commercial may get their parents to buy Frito-Lay products. Frito-Lay proves to be very effective in its promotion.
Frito-Lay has many customers worldwide and tries to categorize them by the usage of four types of segmentation (location, branding, stage of development, and product-profiling Frito-Lay customers) in order to meet their needs. In doing such, it tries to target some customers more than others. For example, studies show that teenagers and young adults tend to purchase more junk food than older people. Thus, people between the ages of 13 and 22 may want to buy more chips than people whose ages range from 30 years old and up. The former is a huger target for Frito-Lay because of their likelihood to buy more of the product.
Ethnic background is not really a consideration, but where the consumers live is a definite factor. The flavor of the chip has to appeal to the people living in a specific spot, and that changes as you move from country to country. For example, people in North America would prefer to eat barbecue- flavored chips, whereas people living in China may prefer to eat duck-flavored chips. Frito-Lay must also take note of which brands are the most popular as well as the habits of their customers. If the most popular snack in Canada is Cheetos, for example, then Frito-Lay should ship more Cheetos to Canada than any other of their products. In this way, they will maximize their profit on Cheetos in Canada. It is not likely that Frito-Lay sells a lot of chips to professional athletes, so they need to find out what their customers enjoy doing to sell to more people. For example, if a lot of hunters like to eat Spitz (a Frito-Lay product), then Frito-Lay should start targeting people who go hunting while promoting Spitz.
Other chip-manufacturing brands such as No Name and President's Choice have provided a bit of competition in the market for Frito-Lay because of their lower cost. Generally, however, Frito-Lay has little competition. In fact, Frito-Lay owns all of the major chip brands (including Lays, Doritos, Cheetos, Ruffles, inter alia) thus restricting their competition severely. The factor that really sets it apart and gives Frito-Lay the distinct edge over other chip manufacturers is that they have a larger variety of snack foods to market, promote and sell to the public.
