Goblessed

measures of the quality of a cluster solution, they are no more important than informed managerial judgment. Researchers oftenl offer two or three possibilities to discuss. The "right" number of segments is subjective, but in practice companies tend to settle on four to eight segments. In a diverse, complex, and lucrative category more might be called for. Agreeing on the number of segments, as well as the labels that will be attached to them, always requires careful study of their full profiles. While the segments may be defined with one class of basis variables (e.g. attitudes about fashion and shopping), you always need to describe the segments in terms of other variables (e.g. demographics, spending, media preferences, preferred brands) that were not part of the definition of the segments. Application An important deliverable from most segmentation research is a tool for classifying other consumers into the segments. This could be a formula where by asking a small number...

differentiation. You may say that only a few companies have become leaders by means of an off-core differentiation. Let's not argue what is many and what is a few. By the way, most companies never become leaders, nor need they become. However, if you are in a competitive market and trying to make a living, an off-core strategy is the best chance you have to give a group of consumers a good reason to devotedly prefer you and even create a private monopoly for you. Open a window I'm not trying to argue that differentiation within the core benefits is a bad idea, if you can do it. It opens a window of opportunity for you, until they start to imitate you. For a man like Michael Dell, that was enough to become a billionaire. Dell changed the way in which personal computers are sold. Michael Dell understood that from the moment that personal computers became standardized (thanks to the IBM clones on the one hand and to the foresight of Microsoft in the 1980's, on the other hand) ...