Responding to competition: A strategy for Sun/Lost City, South Africa

Sun Lost City's position as the pre-eminent resort in Africa was threatened in the 1990s when its monopoly on gambling in South Africa was removed. In response to the new competition, the resort embarked on a research program to explore what marketing actions it should pursue. As part of this overall program, this project involved conducting personal interviews with 302 visitors to Sun/Lost City, South Africa. The study was intended to explore the potential of using the interface between benefits and constraints to identify optimum target markets among existing visitors. The interview instrument contained 20 benefit items and 14 constraint items. Results of factor analyses showed a four-factor solution on the benefit items and a three-factor solution on the constraint items. The domain mean scores were used to group respondents into three constraint and three benefit clusters. The clusters were described by selected behavioral variables. The two sets of clusters were cross-tabulated to produce nine market segments. From among these, four potential target markets were identified as being likely to offer the best return on marketing effort.