BtoB市場のセグメンテーション

Business-to-Business segmentation rarely receives the attention that its cousin discipline, customer segmentation, receives.  We at SIS International Market Research have compiled a few considerations for B2B segmentation.  This is not an exhaustive description, but an overview for understanding how business-to-business can help companies to grow their accounts and revenues.  SIS helps companies develop actionable segmentation plans that can boost profitability.

企業はセグメンテーションにおいていくつかの異なる変数を考慮することができます。

• 行動
• 収益性 / 顧客生涯価値
• 利点 / 属性
• コンジョイント分析
• 使用または適用
• 製品クラス
• 価格/品質の要求
• 競合他社選手

In Low-involvement product offerings, companies can consider researching usage behavior, buyer behavior, price elasticity / sensitivity and brand loyalty, among others.  For high and medium involvement products, businesses can consider researching their customers’ comprehensive needs, buyer types, business’ buying behavior and core values, among many others.  Lifetime Customer Value as a metric can provide companies a measurement of the value of a client to the firm; with research into each segment done by Lifetime Customer Value and the Pareto principle (80 20 rule), companies can make a concerted effort to improve profitability.  The variables for segmentation will vary by company and industry.

マイケル・ベイカー著「マーケティング” asserts that Market Positioning should include quantitative analysis.  He advanced the following quantitative analysis:

潜在市場規模 x 浸透確率

Customer share has received currency in the past two decades over market share as a useful metric.  Companies can estimate market potential with the following quantitative analysis:

市場における顧客潜在力 x 顧客シェア

B2B セグメンテーション調査に関する考慮事項:

1. Avoid focusing too much on the product.  Rather, companies might consider a segmentation based on perceived benefits by each segment.  An example of this is with many software companies that focus only on functions, rather than the benefits that customers of many different sizes may perceive.
2. Avoid focusing on company size as a means to meet customer needs.  By putting companies in categories by how many employees they have, these segmentations can miss important insights and make smaller companies feel that their needs won’t be met.
3. Business-to-business segmentation needs to be useful to the company.  While companies can do vast amounts of research, the segmentation information needs to be relevant and actionable.
4. To create a clear market positioning that can be tested.  An example of a positioning statement is:
   情報システム管理者にとって、Microsoft は、追加機能、サービス、競争力のある価格設定により、価格に見合った価値を最も多く提供するソフトウェア パッケージ ブランドです。
5. 顧客ニーズが急速に変化する中、研究への継続的な取り組み

市場セグメンテーションでヘビーユーザーをターゲットにするのはなぜですか?

1. Companies can often extract the most value from these customers because they’re willing to spend.  According to the Pareto Principle / 80 20 Rule, companies can benefit from targeting the 20% of customers that compose 80% of their revenues.
2. 顧客ロイヤルティの向上は長期的に顧客獲得コストを削減します
3. Marketing costs can become cheaper, as customers increase the frequency of purchase

B2B マーケティングの一般的なガイドライン:

• 初心者
  • 製品のメリットに焦点を当てる
  • メッセージが適切に整理されていると、よりよく学習できます
  • 情報への複数の露出から利益を得る
• 専門家
  • 製品の特性に焦点を当てる
  • メッセージが整理されているかどうかを簡単に知ることができます
  • 情報への一回の露出から利益を得る