The target group unifies a group of people or organizations that share common needs. Each group can be described by common characteristics (e.g. level of education, entrepreneur or employee status, adherance to industry sector, purpose of an organisation).

This exercise requires that you know who your (potential) customers are and what their needs are. If you have difficulties in defining the target group you may think of doing a field market research or contracting a market research agency to do it. A market research typically comprises the empirical study of the needs of a very broadly defined target group, e.g. all enterprises in country x, all SMEs in the manufacturing sector. The objective is to understand who your target group(s) is/are, what their needs are and whether you have to change your service or programme offerings to satisfy an existing need.