How should business markets be segmented

1.Demographic

Which industries should we serve?

What size companies should we serve?

What geographical areas should we serve?

How should business markets be segmented?

2.Operating Variables

.

What customer technologies should we focus?

.Customer capabilities

Should we serve customers needing many or few service?

User and Nonuser

Nonuser

User

Should we serve heavy users, medium users ,light user or nonuser?

3.Purchasing ApproachesPurchasing-function organization

Should we serve companies with a highly centralized or decentralized purchasing organization?

Power structure

Should we serve companies that are engineering dominated ,financially dominated and so on?

Nature of existing relationship

Should we serve companies with which we have strong relationship or simply go after the most desirable companies?

General purchasing policies

Should we serve companies that prefer leasing/system purchases/sealed bidding?

Purchasing criteria

Should we serve companies that are seeking quality? service?price?

4.Situational factors

Should we serve companies that need quick and sudden service?

Specific application

Should we focus on a certain application of our product rather than all applications?

Size and order

Should we focus on large or small orders?

5.Personal Characteristics

Buyer-seller relationship

Should we serve companies whose people and values are similar to ours?

Attitude towards risk

Should we serve risk-taking or risk-avoiding customers?

Loyalty

Should we serve companies that show high loyalty to their suppliers?

Sameer Mathur

MBASkills.in

Indian institute of Management Lucknow

Marketing professor 2013-

Marketing professor 2009-13

Ph.D and MS(marketing)2003-2009

Madhusudan DahalNational Institute of Technology surat

intern