Much marketing effort can be wasted by attracting interest from people who for one reason or another are unsuitable potential customers. Either they have insufficient funds to make the purchase, they have unstable employment prospects, or they are just not at a time of life when timeshare is the right purchase for them. Lead generation, either by agents or in-house, is a potentially costly business because industry conversion rates average about 1 in 10 (ARDA, 2002b). These costs are further compounded if leads result in sales that are subsequently rescinded when customers change their minds and decide not to go ahead with the purchase.

Before going on to outline some ways of segmenting customers and current timeshare customer profiles, it is valuable to pause for a moment and think about the nature of timeshare service offers. Many debates have been held about the marketing of services and the extent of the differences with marketing products. Marketing has been largely concerned with ensuring that the marketing mix is appropriate that is, ensuring that the product, place, price, and promotion are consistent with each other and focused on an identified market segment of customers. The 4Ps have been added to in the case of services because of the elements of services listed earlier. Table 4.2 lists the marketing mix for services, which now include people, processes, and premises in addition (Lashley, 2000).