Class market

The class market is a market on which products or services exclusively for specific target groups offered are.

General

The mass market created the variety of needs and their coverage , the class market created the variety of types. In a class market, certain goods are reserved for certain groups of the population . As early as 1955, Erich Potthoff demanded that production for the class market should be replaced by production for the mass market. It was assumed that it would be more worthwhile to meet the needs of broad sections of the working population than the wishes of a small upper class . That is why today many former class markets have become mass markets.

Business aspects

A division into class market - mass market is based on the knowledge that, as Erich Schneider noted, the morphological structure of the supplier and customer primarily plays no role, but only the market behavior of economic subjects is relevant. The decisive factor is the market volume , with a class market being characterized by the limitation of the supply quantity or the limitation that a large part of the demanders impose on themselves. In the class market , a certain amount of market saturation is quickly reached in terms of volume ; the main emphasis is placed on improving product quality .

There is a high degree of product differentiation on the class market , which is why a differentiated market development strategy predominates here:

Undifferentiated marketing strategy	Concentrated marketing strategy	Differentiated marketing strategy
Mass market uniform offer for all consumers	Niche market special offer for a target group	Class market special offers for different target groups

Typical examples of a class market are the markets for luxury goods or services with a high price strategy ( delicacies , luxury hotels , luxury apartments , jewelry ), vintage cars or sports cars . Only certain target groups are interested in the offer. An example of the market segmentation of ready-to-wear clothing into market types is prêt-à-porter for the mass market and haute couture for the class market.

Economic aspects

The selection function of the market price means that when the price level is high, there are predominantly demanders whose income or assets are not significantly reduced by the payment. The most important target group are therefore income or wealth millionaires . Luxury goods meet this need for luxury . They form a market segment , which is a different consumption patterns of consumers are than for example with cheap products . The price elasticity can be high to very low, so that the - financially strong - consumers do not or hardly react to price changes. No immanent saturation limits are recognizable for them. Luxury goods are therefore more cyclical, so that demand for them hardly weakens even in the recession . With the Veblen effect , the demand for luxury goods continues to rise despite the price increase.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Josef Bock / Karl Gustav Specht (eds.), Consumer Policy , 1958, p. 44
2. ↑ Josef Bock / Karl Gustav Specht (ed.), Consumer Policy , 1958, p. 99
3. ↑ Erich Potthoff, Reduction of working hours as a social and economic measure: Presentation from the 4th trade union day of the leather union in Frankfurt am Main on June 7, 1955 , 1955, p. 17
4. ↑ Erich Schneider, Introduction to Economic Theory , Part II, 1967, p. 72
5. ↑ BLV Verlagsgesellschaft (ed.), Bavarian Agricultural Yearbook , Volume 39, Issues 2-8, 1962, p. 454
6. ↑ Günter Wöhe / Ulrich Döring , Introduction to General Business Administration , 25th edition, 2013, p. 383
7. ↑ Michael Jäckel (ed.), Elmar Lange: Ambivalenzen des Konsum und der Werblichen Kommunikation , 2007, p. 143 f.
8. ↑ Hans-Lothar Merten, Art and Luxury as Capital Investment , 2014, p. 9