Conventional target marketing perpetuates divisions of potential customers into smaller groups according to physical or conceived demographic profiles, such as by technology, geolocations, types of businesses, etc. BiomedAlliance has taken a quite different perspective on the life science R&D tools market that it is organized into domain knowledge.
For example, let's consider the 'cell biology' market. Anyone who has recently attended a cell biology symposium or conference or picked up a copy of JCB will instantly recognize a convoluted landscape: advanced cytology, molecular biology, genetics biochemistry, computation and engineering. Cell biology is no longer a descriptive science as it was 200 or even 60 years ago. No category covers its diversity or entirety. But this ambiguity may be turned into an enticing prospect for technological innovators, if we can find innovative ways to narrate through this knowledge space.
Every R&D tool or its application can be defined by a few concrete concepts (denotative, semantic). They can also have connotative nodes and associative nodes, and together they represent a perceived space developed by particular scientific activities. People whose work produces this space make the niche market.
Therefore, a niche market is not to be conceived as a mere container; rather, its size and shape must be revealed by critical analysis. Reaching a significant coherence in this process is pivotal to translating knowledge and data into practical marketing insights.