Strategic Case Analysis
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terms of their annual revenue when they choose your products
vis-a-vis the competition.
Thus, as a market strategist, you can better serve your
company and your customers if you segment your customers
by the jobs they hire your products to do for them, than going
for a plain-vanilla demographic customer segmentation by
company size, such as big, mid-market, and small!
Second Example: The above insight on segmenting business
customers by product usage is just one of many insights one
should bring as a marketing strategist. What follows is
another example from the high-tech Mecca or Silicon Valley.
The example is from a hardware company, which believes
that its top three marketing channels are word-of-mouth,
direct sales, and indirect (or channel) sales. It typically
segments customers (most of whom are large to mid-size
businesses) into the following three segments for all
downstream sales and marketing activities:
Customer Segment A: If the company gains or retains a
customer in this segment, it will provide the company the
needed buzz in the market place. So, the company strives to
retain all the firms in this segment, no matter what the cost,
and usually succeeds, irrespective of new product / service
introductions from the competition. Needless to say, the
company deploys resources at the highest level (including
CEO-to-CEO sales pitches) to get the required marketing
buzz.
Customer Segment B: Customers falling into this category are
the next in the order of importance. These may be customers
of existing cash-cow products or hot prospects for new
products. The company earns a significant chunk of its
revenues from these customers as well, and tries its best to
retain these customers.
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