اجرای مشروح در تقسیم بندی بازار های صنعتی

Market segmentation is an important method of strategic marketing and constitutes a cornerstone of the marketing literature. It has undergone extensive scientific inquiry during the past 50 years. Reporting on an extensive review of the market segmentation literature, the challenging task of implementing industrial market segmentation is discussed and unfolded in this article. Extant literature has identified segmentation implementation as a core challenge for marketers, but also one, which has received limited empirical attention. Future research opportunities are formulated in this article to pave the way towards closing this gap. The extent of implementation coverage is assessed and various notions of implementation are identified. Implementation as the task of converting segmentation plans into action (referred to as execution) is identified as a particularly beneficial focus area for marketing management. Three key elements and challenges connected to execution of market segmentation are identified — organization, motivation, and adaptation.

Market segmentation has attracted an immense interest in the marketing literature and is considered one of the most influential strategic marketing devices (Plank, 1985 and Wind, 1978). Market segmentation has been defined as “…an ongoing and iterative process of examining and grouping potential and actual buyers with similar product needs into subgroups that can then be targeted with an appropriate marketing mix in such a way as to facilitate the objectives of both parties” (Mitchell & Wilson, 1998, p. 431). Market segmentation is frequently appraised as an effective strategic marketing tool (Weinstein, 2006 and Wind, 1978) and reflected in the well-known S–T–P conceptualization of the market segmentation process (Kotler, 1984). The concept is valuable because of its ability to assist in the understanding of markets (Weinstein, 2006) and selection of target markets (Sarabia, 1996). Having a clear segmentation plan can reportedly help managers devise marketing programs to meet the specific needs of different segment customers (Doyle & Saunders, 1985). Successful implementation of market segmentation is reported problematic, despite being extensively researched and widely acknowledged as a powerful concept by practice (Abratt, 1993, Dibb and Wensley, 2002, Hlavacek and Reddy, 1986 and Palmer and Millier, 2004). The desired outcome, and the raison d'être of the implementation of market segmentation, is to reap the benefits of competitive advantage (Goller, Hogg, & Kalafatis, 2002), i.e. gain market share and/or sell more. But these benefits of market segmentation strategy cannot be reaped if the segmentation plan cannot be implemented. The implementation of plans and strategies is a recurring theme in the management literature (Govindarajan, 1988, March and Simon, 1958 and Weick and Quinn, 1999). However, this study focuses on providing a review and synthesis of the industrial market segmentation literature. Segmentation is particularly challenging in industrial markets (Bonoma and Shapiro, 1984, Chéron and Kleinschmidt, 1985, Freytag and Clarke, 2001, Mitchell and Wilson, 1998 and Plank, 1985), because 1) heterogeneity among customers is more pronounced and visible due to frequent communication, 2) social interaction characterizes the exchange and complicates stimulus–response patterns, 3) customers stimulate back to a larger extent by communicating needs and wants directly, 4) relations are multiplex, generating multiple stimulus channels, 5) offerings are more complex and frequently developed in interaction, and 6) segments are more unstable. Hence, companies operating on industrial markets face significant implementation complexities compared to those operating in consumer markets.

Problems related to implementation frequently explain why industrial companies fail to reap the benefits of segmentation. Despite broad recognition of the importance of segmentation implementation and the evidence of problems experienced by marketing managers, the scientific marketing community has still not fully embraced this research topic. Moreover, the limited research is dominated by conceptual research, with empirical studies constituting merely 20% of the sample analyzed in this article. Three perspectives on implementation can be found in the literature: theory-to-practice, marketing planning, and execution. The theory–practice gap has been discussed throughout the history of market segmentation research. Practitioners still struggle with implementing complex theoretical abstractions of markets and customers as well as mathematical tools and models. Implementation understood as the tasks associated with converting analytical results into plans and strategies also constitutes a recurrent subject of investigations. Execution concerns the actual doing and actioning of segmentation plans, in other words the activities associated with reaching the target customers. The evidence shows that execution has only in the most recent decade appeared as a key implementation topic. However, execution is regarded a key challenge, especially in industrial markets, where these activities are particularly complex. In recognition of the importance of execution, three core elements of execution have been proposed: organization, motivation, and adaptation. Furthermore, a series of important future research avenues connected to these issues have been proposed. Despite being one more in a series of non-empirical articles, thereby ironically adding to the described imbalance between theoretical and empirical research, we believe that this article constitutes a stepping stone for future research efforts. The article has contributed by uncovering the status of implementation in the market segmentation literature and unfolded the concept, both on the premises of the extant literature, but also with regards to future research opportunities. The discussion has attempted to contribute to conceptual clarity in the extant discourse and pointed to segmentation execution as a particularly interesting research area. The execution perspective of implementation is important because it is directly connected to the outcomes of market segmentation strategy. Execution provides the link between marketing strategy and customer response and is therefore critical to competitive advantage. Hence, companies need to direct more attention to this core part of segmentation. Successful execution relies on cooperation and coordination between managers in sales/marketing, other customer facing functions, and top management. When segmentation strategies have been devised and plans have been formulated there is still much work to do — in other words segmentation plans are not self-executing. We believe that the paper has paved some of the way for increased research efforts into the implementation of industrial market segmentation and specifically the element of execution.