I have found that the current target market for this product is fairly large due in part to the fact that our society has become so technology driven. Everyone from children to elderly adults enjoy taking photos. It seems to me from research that the most common target market would be females, ages 16 – 30. I chose this range because I know from experience that young women love to take photographs of and with their friends and family. Photographs are a great way for memories and experiences to be saved. Photographs can be saved and passed on to other generations. I feel that once women begin having children they are more likely to purchase a camera with a better lens system for photographing their children and family. I have seen this become more and more common since I became a mother. Many women that I know do still have a compact camera but it is typically only used when they do not have their more high tech camera or cell phone with them.
In more recent years, compact digital camera sales are on the decline. This is largely in part to two things; the first being that most everyone has a cell phone that takes photos and the second being that a new age of high tech affordable digital cameras with lenses have taken amateur photography by storm. The affordable digital cameras that I am speaking of are called SLR cameras. These cameras have a single lens reflex, this is important to note because this allows a person to look through the lens and see exactly what will be captured, contrary to the viewfinder on many compact digital cameras where the image can be significantly different. All SLR cameras typically come with one starter lens. These allow even the most amateur photographer to take stellar pictures by pointing and shooting. These types of cameras have become increasingly lower in price which is the main cause for the decline in purchases of compact digital cameras. The second reason that compact digital cameras are on the decline is due to the increasing popularity of cell phones that have cameras. Patents for a digital camera with in a cell phone date back to 1956. The first camera containing a cell phone was created near the end of the 1990’s. It is important to note that when cell phone cameras were first created they didn’t have the quality that a compact digital camera had. Initially many of the cameras didn’t contain a flash or any type of lens modification. This has drastically changed. Many of these cell phone cameras now take photos that are in the same quality range as a compact digital camera. Our society has become so convenience based that it is no wonder that cell phone cameras have escalated in popularity. Add in the ability to instantly upload photo to social media websites and you have what has been deemed as the perfect mix. There doesn’t seem to be any political or legal factors to note for compact digital camera decline. The only competitive factor that I have found is that the high end lens cameras have reduced their prices as previously noted above.
Recommendations for possible action marketers would be to gear the products to a younger generation that may not have access to funds to purchase a higher end digital camera or may not have cell phones. Older generations could be approached in the same manner as they are not typically interested in modern technology. It would be beneficial to remind consumers of the ease of saving photos from a digital camera to a hard drive or disk as some cell phone cameras do not have an easy way to transfer photos once they have been taken. Lastly, compact digital camera companies could use the fact