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Target market

group of people toward which an organization has decided to aim its marketing efforts

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ198981
Source-derived summary

A target market is a group of customers within a business's serviceable available market at which a business aims its product features, marketing efforts and pricing. A target market is a subset of the total market for a product or service. The serviceable obtainable market (SOM) is a subset of a target market.

The target market typically consists of consumers who exhibit similar characteristics (such as age, location, income or lifestyle) and are considered most likely to buy a business's market offerings or are likely to be the most profitable segments for the business to service.

Once the target market(s) have been identified, the business will normally tailor the marketing mix (4 Ps) with the needs and expectations of the target in mind. This may involve carrying out additional consumer research in order to gain deep insights into the typical consumer's motivations, purchasing habits and media usage patterns.

The choice of a suitable target market is one of the final steps in the market segmentation process. The choice of a target market relies heavily on the marketer's judgement, after carrying out basic research to identify those segments with the greatest potential for the business.

Occasionally a business may select more than one segment as the focus of its activities, in which case, it would normally identify a primary target and a secondary target. Primary target markets are those market segments to which marketing efforts are primarily directed and where more of the business's resources are allocated, while secondary markets are often smaller segments or less vital to a product's success.

Editorial summary

“Target market” enters the record as group of people toward which an organization has decided to aim its marketing efforts. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Target, market and group can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current 260-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Target, market and group.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Target market” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Target, market and group provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q198981. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Target market”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Target market primary sources, Target market archive and Target research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Target market”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Target market” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.