Amazon.com description: Product Description: Develop a successful strategy for segmenting high-tech and industrial markets!

Whether it's due to a lack of focus, lack of time, or just bad planning, most companies fall short of the mark in their target marketing. The Handbook of Market Segmentation, 3rd Edition: Strategic Target Marketing for Business and Technology Firms is a practical, how-to guide to what marketers need to know about defining, segmenting, and targeting business markets: assessing customer needs; gauging the competition; designing winning strategies; and maximizing corporate resources. The latest edition of this marketing classic combines content and features from the previous editions with an emphasis on successful practices in business-to-business and high-tech segmentation. This valuable research source puts the latest thinking from the business and academic communities at your fingertips.

From the author:

The most important thing I’ve learned from working in market segmentation research and strategy for more than 15 years is that few companies get the most from their target marketing. Their top executives advocate the need to be market- or customer-oriented but base their marketing plans on cursory, incomplete, or emotional analyses. They end up with ’fuzzy’ business missions, unclear objectives, information that isn’t decision-oriented, unfocused promotional strategies, and no real plan to attack niche markets. This happens because they haven’t developed an effective strategy for segmenting high-tech and industrial markets. They don’t have a process that introduces and improves their business segmentation planning and execution. What they need is a handbook for improving their organization’s performance in new and existing business markets.

Handbook of Market Segmentation, Third Edition: Strategic Target Marketing for Business and Technology Firm is a state-of-the-art guide to market identification, analysis, selection, and strategy. The book is organized into four parts (segmentation planning, business segmentation bases, implementing segmentation strategy, segmentation strategy cases) and includes applications, case studies, checklists, figures, and tables. Each chapter features a Segmentation Skillbuilder (a field-tested exercise that improves your working knowledge of key business-to-business segmentation topics) and a Business Segmentation Insight (an in-depth look at a key segmentation issue).

Handbook of Market Segmentation, Third Edition: Strategic Target Marketing for Business and Technology Firms examines:

• how to conduct effective, cost-efficient, and profitable segmentation studies
• segmentation options such as differentiation and niche marketing
• defining business markets
• a 10-point program for segmenting business markets (planning and research)
• business segmentation bases (geographics, firmographics, benefits, usage, purchasing behavior)
• how North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) has replaced SIC analysis
• criteria for choosing target markets
• implementing segmentation in business organizations
• how to conduct (and benefit from) a segmentation audit
• detailed segmentation studies on six companies—Collins Aviation Services, Dev-Soft, Dow Corning, Lexmark International, Pharmacia Corporation, and Sportmed
• and much more!

Handbook of Market Segmentation, Third Edition: Strategic Target Marketing for Business and Technology Firms is an essential resource for business professionals working in the high-tech, industrial, and business service industries, and for educators training the next generation of marketers, managers, and strategists.