Editing Market segmentation (section)

==== External sources ====
* Commissioned research (where the business commissions a research study and maintains exclusive rights to the data; typically the most expensive means of data collection)
* Data-mining techniques
* Census data (population and business census)
* Observed purchase behaviours
* Government agencies and departments
* Government statistics and surveys (e.g. studies by departments of trade, industry, technology, etc.)
* Omnibus surveys (a standard, regular survey with a basic set of questions about demographics and lifestyles where an individual can add specific sets of questions about product preference or usage; generally lower cost than commissioned survey methods)
* Professional/Industry associations/Employer associations
* Proprietary surveys or tracking studies (also known as ''syndicated research''; studies carried out by market research companies where businesses can purchase the right to access part of the data set)
* Proprietary databases/software<ref>Wedel, M. and Wagner, A., ''Market Segmentation: Conceptual and Methodological Foundations,'' Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998, See Chapter 14</ref>