M.M. Lafleur's Market Targeting Strategies

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Case Study- M.M. Lafleur
Question 1: Define M.M. Lafleur's product offering across all three levels of a product (Hint: think core, actual, and augmented product). At what product level do you think M.M Lafleur provides the most value to the customer? Why?
The following is the definition of M.M. Lafleur’s offering across the three levels of a product. First, the clothing company’s core product is time-saving office wear shopping and comfortability. M.M. Lafleur’s customers are professional women who do not like shopping due to their fixed working schedules. Therefore, the company strives to address this problem by ensuring that the women save time while shopping and feel comfortable in the process. M.M. Lafleur does this by offering retail and e-commerce operations: professional women can purchase the company’s offerings in the comfort of their homes by buying outfits online or requesting the bento box. Also, the customers could visit the company’s retail outlets such as pop-up stores or showrooms to purchase garments of their choice.
Secondly, M.M. Lafleur’s actual product is women's office wear. The company specializes in offering work clothes for professional women. The following are the features of the garments that M.M. Lafleur provides. First, the fabrics used to make the clothes are wrinkle-free, breathable enough to stop sweat, hide undergarments, and maintain their shape. Secondly, most of the garments have snaps to prevent the movement of the bra straps, pant legs with buttons to allow easy adjustment to various lengths, and underarm pads to stop sweat from messing with the outfit. Lastly, the clothes design is based on multiple model sizes to fit women of different sizes.
Finally, the augmented product of M.M. Lafleur is free shipping and good customer service. The company allows its customers to take part in free testing of their available offers, purchase the ones of their choice, and return the rest to the organization: the firm pays attention to its buyers and ensures that it meets their needs. Also, M.M. Lafleur does not charge its customers to ship the commodities to and from the company.
M.M. Lafleur offers the most value to the customer at the core product level: this is because it is at this stage that the customers receive the most benefits. The following are the benefits that the customers get at this product level. Firstly, professional women can purchase official wear in the comfort of their homes by purchasing items of their choice directly from the organization’s website. Secondly, the customers can save a lot of time while shopping for their office wear online and from the retail stores since the company deals only in workwear for women, so they do not have to take long looking for the items they need.
Question 2: How does M.M. Lafleur segment the market?
M.M. Lafleur segments the market in the following ways. First, the company leverages demographic segmentation. M.M. Lafleur groups its customers based on their physical location, which is why it has showrooms in various states within the United States, such as Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, Boston, Washington DC, and San Francisco. This form of segmentation enables the company to advertise its products to its customers from different locations effectively. Secondly, M.M. Lafleur utilizes benefits sought segmentation. According to Xiao et al. (2019), in this form of segmentation, companies divide their customers while considering the unique value ideas that they expect to gain from the organization’s services and products. M.M. Lafleur is aware that professional women lack the interest and time to purchase office wear even though they need it, so the organization sells it to them through its online and retail stores located in various states to help them save time. Lastly, the company uses psychographic segmentation. In this case, M.M. Lafleur c...