So I know what you must be thinking.
Okay, this is fine for consumer markets.
But how do I go about segmented industrial markets?
Well, it turns out that you can follow a very similar approach.
At the very basis, you will start by easy to identify company variables.
Demographic variables, such as the company size, the number of employees,
the industry sector in which it operates, and even where some of the factories or
office is located, will be the first approach.
You might also look into operating variables.
These are somewhat still relatively easy to get, such as the company technology,
what will the product be used for, specific customer capabilities,
whether they lack more on the technical side or on the financial side.
Or even the purchasing approach, what is the purchasing organization?
Does it involve many departments, engineering, purchasing, financing, etc?
And what are the power structures between these different structures within
the organization, which are specifically a little bit harder to get?
Once you've started getting deeper, you might get into more situational factors,
such as, what is the urgency of fulfillment?
Or what should be the lead time on the delivery of some of the orders?
What are the specific product applications for
which they will be using our product or service, or even, what are the minimum
order sizes or maximum order sizes, which they will like to deserve?
And finally, you go into more specific personal characteristics and
all the way up to the more strategic basis for segmentation,
which is what is the level of impact that I will be able to have in the profit and
loss statement or in the profitability of that company, in which case,
if it's very high, immediately, it will become a strategic partner, okay.
So I have depicted this progression of levels of difficulty
in this hierarchy called level approach, which essentially resembles
some of the basis for segmenting consumer markets.
As you can see, segmentation is a critical tool to be able to
understand customers and
segment them properly to have any chance at being able to fulfill their needs or
satisfy their wants in a meaningful way and better than some other company.
Now, you have the tools to be able to carry out the proper segmentation,
either in industrial or in consumer markets.
In the next section, I'm going to deal with a couple of research methods
that will help you precisely to accomplish the goal.
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Mario CapizzaniLecturer
