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Customer service represents a significant opportunity for segmenting markets. This article reviews the importance of customer service and the conceptual issues associated with segmenting industrial markets on the basis of customer service. A methodology is presented which can be used by managers to classify a market into segments with different customer service needs. Empirical results from a high‐technology industry are also presented. The article emphasises the need to recognise the differing customer service requirements of segments of customers when establishing priorities for customer service expenditures.

This paper’s main objective is to expand the demand-driven strategic field by developing a model where endogenization of consumers’ preferences for clean(er) products becomes the driver of the firm green corporate social responsible (GCSR) profit maximization behavior.

The model proposes that in undifferentiated markets, firms using a conventional technology manage production-related negative externalities via information asymmetries. In turn, when consumer socially responsible individuals (CnSR) discover the nature of the information asymmetries, they then reveal their preferences. The building block of the model is that CnSR derive value both from intrinsic as well as extrinsic product features, and derive negative satisfaction from the production negative externalities. In turn, CnSR preferences offer a higher willingness to pay for a combined intrinsic (private good and direct utility) and extrinsic (public good and feel good–do good utility) product.

The model demonstrates that the firm’s GCSR behavior is a technological-driven process directly affecting the extrinsic component of the product through the development of a safe technology, and exclusively targeting CnSR type of consumers. The corollary of the model is that for the firm pursuing a GCSR behavior, the development of a competitive advantage with higher firm performance leads to profit maximization when exclusively serving the GCSR segment of the market. Thus, GCSR is the result of unusual innovation efforts.

This paper presents a model that expands the field of strategic management through the demand-driven incorporation and respective modeling. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first model to explicitly develop this relationship in this format.

For agricultural bankers, agribusiness managers, and salespeople, understanding customers and their preferences and behaviors is crucial to success. The two goals of this paper are first to identify today's distinct market segments for financial products for US crop and livestock commercial producers, and second to predict segment membership based on observable characteristics.

Cluster analysis was used to identify four distinct buyer segments for the purchase of financial products and services by US crop and livestock commercial producers. A multinomial logit model was used to predict segment membership based on demographic, behavioral, and business management factors.

Although, traditionally, the financial services industry has segmented the market for commercial producers based primarily on sales/size categories; this research shows that this factor is not a significant predictor of behavior. Instead, this paper proposes a segmentation based on buying behaviors and identify four distinct market segments for financial products and services for US crop and livestock commercial producers: balance, price, convenience, and service. The balance segment being by far the largest segment.

Although the sample size means is representative of the US ag population, it may or may not be representative of the customers of a regional lender. Readers who are lenders are therefore advised to apply this methodology to their customer database and use the results of the paper as a quality check or benchmarking exercise. The findings also raise a number of issues, which require further research, such as how to implement a targeted marketing plan when there is one dominant segment and two other distinct segments.

Lenders need to reconsider their market segmentation methodology.

While there has been some research on market segments for retail financial markets, apparently there has been no work on market segments for agricultural financial products. This study exploits a unique dataset of 2,575 responses to Purdue's Large Commercial Producer Survey and the 2008 survey is the first time the survey included a series of detailed questions on how producers choose a financial service provider. This paper's findings will benefit agricultural bankers and agribusinesses that offer financing to their customers.

Explores development in market segmentation relating to hospitality and tourism research published between 1990 and 1998. The literature is divided into three sections: segmenting a market; market targeting and marketing positioning. Identifies new areas for research, deeper examination of segments, identification of difference between markets, and more segments.

In this, the second edition, the experience of actually running a marketing planning process in organisations further updates and revises the highly practical emphasis. The need for vision, how to enunciate it, and the interface between various levels of managers are integrated specifically into the process. Further analysis using the SWOT technique is provided together with enhanced insight into maintaining competitive advantage. Essentially a practical manual on running a planning process, the worksheet method has been well tried and tested. The experience of managers who have implemented the process using the first edition is included to enhance the technique′s dynamism and effectiveness.

This paper attempts to contribute to an expanding body of literature that critically engages with both the theory and practice of market segmentation. Through the theoretical lens of liminality and its implicit elements, the notion of boundary creation inherent in age‐based market segmentation of the youth market is explored.

Using empirical data collected as part of a longitudinal study on liminal consumers, marketing's attempt at laying down parameters and constructing borders is presented as a strategic exacerbation of liminal zones already replete with tension and ambiguity.

It is concluded that theoretical consideration of this data highlights the fluidity and porous nature of such constructed boundaries, rendering attempts at creating discernable, knowable segments, potentially futile. Thus by critically viewing this segment, not just as a marketing demographic, but as a liminal zone, an alternative consideration of the theory and practice of age segmentation is presented.

The longitudinal study spanned a period from midway through the participants' final months of primary education and early stages of secondary education. Research that focused on their completion of a year in secondary education would perhaps have yielded further insights.

This research offers tangible insights into the social worlds of a burgeoning market segment, albeit a liminal one, offering actionable realities based on the inextricable intertwining of their consumption practices and lived experiences.

Rather than view children as socio‐cultural non‐descripts who are of interest to marketers purely for their ability to be located along a continuum of cognitive development, this research aims to understand and explore the specific intricasies of the tweens' mediation of their liminal world using consumption practices

Consumption practices emerged that highlighted the attempted resolution and mediation of such tensions while also pointing to the clear mutability and ambiguity of supposed borders between child, tween and teen segmented groups. Age‐segmentation, conceptualised by marketers as a strategic creation of borders so as to enhance product offerings little reflects the realities of how age is perceived, experienced and acted out by those categorised within the margins and parameters of targeted marketing. By viewing this segment, not just as a marketing demographic but as a liminal zone where liminars “elude or slip through the network of classifications that normally locate states and positions in cultural space”, an alternative consideration of the theory and practice of age‐segmentation is presented.

The aim of this paper is to propose an approach to international market segmentation that identifies meaningful cross‐national consumer segments, which focuses on airline passengers in the NAFTA market.

A conjoint analysis is used to evaluate consumers' preferences for six flight attributes: price, in‐flight service, number of stops before destination, on‐time performance, frequent flyer programme, and country of airline. A cluster analysis based on the relative importance scores of each of the six flights attributes then identifies five segments that prioritize similar product attributes within each country.

A representative sample of 4,787 airline passengers from the three countries reveal that price is the most important attribute for consumers from the USA and Canada, while on‐time performance is the most important attribute for Mexican consumers. A cluster analysis identifies five segments that prioritize similar product attributes within each country. It is also found that there are five cross‐national consumer segments in the NAFTA market that are homogeneous in terms of consumer preferences but heterogeneous in terms of relative group size and demographic variables.

The study is based on a purposive sample, which limits the ability to generalize to the whole population with any known degree of precision.

The research produces practical operational information on each segment that is translatable into strategy, specifically in terms of positioning, promotion, and targeting of the airline service.

The paper sheds light on the nature of cross‐national segmentation in the NAFTA air passengers market and the resulting cross‐national segmentation will be highly relevant for international marketing management.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of identifying market segments in multistage markets and assessing whether their alignment could provide a useful managerial approach to find competitive advantage and better understand market opportunities.

Using data from a pilot project, need-based market segments from different market stages were identified and their potential alignment evaluated. The data were not designed to test hypotheses, nor were they originally intended to be used to align segments. Nevertheless, they provided a unique opportunity to explore multistage segmentation and segment alignment in a business-to-business (B2B) setting.

Overall, the findings of this exploratory study should encourage both academics and practitioners to continue to explore the possibility of studying and aligning multistage market segments. The possibility of aligning segments was demonstrated using visual alignment based on managerial judgment of data and alignment based on a combined cluster analysis of customers across the multistage markets.

First, the market research was not specifically designed to formulate and test hypotheses about the feasibility of aligning segments in multistage markets – it is an exploratory study. The research was based on a pilot project, and the survey-derived databases were conveniently available for analysis. While sample sizes were small, they are typical of many B2B markets. Second, to more effectively study complex relationships in multistage markets, it would have been desirable to include a more comprehensive set of needs. Each market stage has not only a set of their own perceived needs but also a set of perceptions of the needs of other stages. Third, as in many B2B studies, the data used in this pilot project were based on single informants.

A common complaint among firms is that B2B market segmentation does not really work that well for them. An unexplored reason for this may be that true market segmentation does not stop with one’s direct customer, but should also include the customer’s customer and so on, in a multistage market segmentation structure. One implication of the research presented here suggests that better understanding the segmentation structure in a multistage market can enlighten the opportunities and risks of implementing such a strategy. Multistage market segmentation alignment may lead to innovative positioning and message levers for the sales force to use as an argument to gain advantage according to common and unique aligned segment needs.

The process may be applied to social institutions in addition to commercial organizations.

While it is obvious that market segmentation can be applied to any single market of customers, the question of applying it to complex multistage markets needs additional exploration. The original idea in this paper is that the potential for strategically aligning multistage markets and segments can have both conceptual and managerial implications for establishing competitive advantage and more efficient and effective resource allocation. The paper shows that that such alignment is possible; however, research and research methods in this area are nascent and will require continued step-by-step learning about these complex market structures to build up to a more definitive understanding of the processes involved to guide future research and managerial thinking.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate new methods of examining structural differences among segmented markets beyond comparing merely univariate variable mean scores, so as to help marketers and researchers gain better insights into segment differences for meaningful strategy development.

A comprehensive dataset covering various lodging market segments was constructed from Tripadvisor.com. The data then were sorted into lodging customer segments by star rating, type of operation, and level of price charged. Structural equation modeling with the −2 log‐likelihood difference test was conducted to illustrate how effectively the differences, if any, of market segments could be assessed in contrast to the traditional mean‐score comparison approach.

Guest satisfaction was influenced by the same performance variable to the same magnitude and direction across different lodging segments examined. Such stability in the amount of influence of performance on guest satisfaction was true even in the fact that the variable mean scores were significantly different across the market segments.

The traditional approach to examining segment differences via univariate mean scores could be one set of results, while the effect‐based difference assessments in this paper resulted in another. Developing marketing strategies based on the effect‐based segment differences, as illustrated in this paper, is considered more effective than the traditional mean‐based approach. One limitation of this paper could be use of a secondary dataset with limited scope of the model employed for an illustrative purpose. Another limitation is that the sample characteristics are unknown due to the nature of a secondary dataset. The examination of the market segments was also limited to those based on only three popular variables.

The paper is a fresh attempt to examine market segment differences through the effect of one variable on another. The paper advances the methods of hospitality and tourism research for examining segment differences beyond the traditional univariate mean‐based examination approach. The methodological illustration is applicable to a vast majority of different theoretical frameworks known in the hospitality and tourism field. Use of the assessment method illustrated in this paper also requires future market segmentation studies to rely more on theories than data.

The purpose of this study is to segment the market of first‐time visitors based on the activities travelers engage in while at a destination using demographics, socio‐economic variables, and trip‐related characteristics.

The research analyzes 1,104 exit surveys completed by first‐time visitors to the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. Clustering analysis identifies three segments that are refined and tested by multivariate and bivariate analyses.

The results indicate that there are three distinct segments of first‐time visitors based on travel activities: culture‐oriented (26 percent of the market), active (37 percent), and casual (37 percent). The key differences among the three segments are demographic, socio‐economic, trip‐related characteristics, and spending patterns. These results confirm the sustainability and profitability of the market segments.

Segmenting markets for products or services, in any industry, is vital to gain a better understanding of the customer, and to better allocate scarce tourism resources to product development, marketing, service, and delivery. Therefore, all tourism industry stakeholders must be aware of the market segments that are currently visiting the destination.

Tourist segments based on activities are not absolutes, but a continuum. The majority of first‐time visitors to a destination engage in a variety of travel activities across the segments, running from more to less involved. Successful tourism destinations are those that meet the various activity needs of their segments in both their marketing and on the ground.