groups of customers within a large market who share common characteristics
Target market A target market is a group of customers within a business's serviceable available market that the business has decided to aim its marketing efforts towards. Target markets consist of consumers who exhibit similar characteristics (such as age, location, income, and lifestyle) and are considered most likely to buy a business's product or service.
Ingroups and outgroups The terminology was made popular by Henri Tajfel and colleagues during his work in formulating social identity theory. The significance of ingroup and outgroup categorization was identified using a method called the minimal group paradigm. Tajfel and colleagues found that people can form self-preferencing ingroups within a matter of minutes and that such groups can form even on the basis of seemingly trivial characteristics, such as preferences for certain paintings.[1][2][3][4][5]