Editing Market segmentation (section)

== Basis for segmenting business markets ==
{{See also|Industrial market segmentation}}

Segmenting business markets is more straightforward than segmenting consumer markets. Businesses may be segmented according to industry, business size, business location, turnover, number of employees, company technology, purchasing approach, or any other relevant variables.<ref>Shapiro, B.P. and Bonoma, T.V., "How to Segment Industrial Markets," ''Harvard Business Review,'' May 1984, Online: https://hbr.org/1984/05/how-to-segment-industrial-markets</ref> The most widely used segmentation bases used in business to business markets are geographics and firmographics.<ref name="Weinstein, A. 2013">Weinstein, A., ''Handbook of Market Segmentation: Strategic Targeting for Business and Technology Firms'', 3rd ed., Routledge, 2013, Chapter 4</ref>

The most widely used bases for segmenting business markets are:

: Geographic segmentation occurs when a firm seeks to identify the most promising geographic markets to enter. Businesses can tap into business census-type products published by Government departments to identify geographic regions that meet certain predefined criteria.

: [[Firmographics]] (also known as ''emporographics'' or ''feature-based segmentation'') is the business community's answer to demographic segmentation. It is commonly used in [[business-to-business]] markets (an estimated 81% of [[Business-to-business|B2B]] marketers use this technique). Under this approach the target market is segmented based on features such as company size, industry sector or location usage rate, purchase frequency, number of years in business, ownership factors, and buying situation.<ref>{{cite web|title=B2B Market Segmentation Research|url= http://www.circle-research.com/wp-content/uploads/B2B-market-segmentation-research.pdf |website=circle-research.com |access-date=9 June 2015 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150412033909/http://www.circle-research.com/wp-content/uploads/B2B-market-segmentation-research.pdf |archive-date=12 April 2015}}</ref><ref name="Weinstein, A. 2013"/>

:: Key firmographic variables: standard [[industry classification]] (SIC); company size (either in terms of revenue or number of employees), industry sector or location (country and/or region), usage rate, purchase frequency, number of years in business, ownership factors and buying situation