Marketing youth services - Marketing of Library and Information Services

Looking at attributes of the organization's products can also be useful. Benefit segmentation is the benefit the customer sees in the organization's product. If a love of books and reading is a value for a family, then preschool storytimes (the library's product) will be seen as a benefit because they encourage a love of books and reading. Most libraries have a market segment made up of families and caregivers who regularly attend preschool storytimes, even though those families and caregivers may represent different geographic or demographic variables. "The value of knowing what generic benefit is sought by a customer and whether a given product is seen as possessing that attribute" is that it can be used to predict customer behavior. "Potential customers can be influenced if their desires and perceptions are known," and existing services or new services can be offered according to their effectiveness in providing the benefits sought (Wood, 1988, p. 53).

McNeal (1992) looks at children as an object of market research for the for-profit sector. [R]etailers significantly upped their interest level in children as consumers during the last half of the 1980s" (McNeal, 1992, p. 113), and youth services librarians can benefit from the research that has occurred. Children are seen as a primary market - they have money of their own to spend; as an influence market - they directly and indirectly influence household purchases; and as a future market - the market that has the greatest potential. When these dimensions are augmented with demographics, lifestyles, benefit segmentations, and product usage rate, marketers have a clearer idea of what the needs and wants are of specific target market segments and can devise products and services for those markets and determine how to promote those products and services (McNeal, 1992, pp. 16-17). McNeal has found that the most effective products and services for children appeal to children's most important needs - play, sensory appeal or gratification, and affiliation (McNeal, 1992, pp. 182-91). Children's librarians have operated on these assumptions for years - reading programs are first and foremost fun - they have kid appeal. They use music, movement, color. Children's rooms are set up to help the child feel that he or she belongs and is welcome. "If public libraries understood that children are not only significant customers in their own right and influential participants in family decisions about library use but the future adult users of libraries, they might put more effort into developing long-term customer loyalty" (Walter, 1994, p. 288).