Excerpt from Methodology for Segmenting Industrial Markets: On the Basis of Buying Center Composition Markets, whether industrial or consumer, are heterogeneous. Customers have different needs, constraints, and incentives to satisfy them. As a theory, market segmentation is concerned with grouping poten tial customers into sets that are homogeneous in response to some elements of the marketing mix. This homogeneity of response allows refinement in the development of marketing strategy. A segmentation basis is a criterion according to which potential customers are grouped. The choice of this criterion is critical. The Optimum segmentation basis is that which minimizes the ratio of within segment variance to across segment variance for the response or behavioral variable of interest. Historically, due to the difficulty and cost of transportation, marketers addressed geographically concentrated groups of customers (geographic segmentation basis). Demographic differences age, education, family size) among customers are often associated with different consumption patterns and are used for segmentation as well (demographic segmentation basis). Recent developments in the theory of buyer behavior and in the measurement of customer attitudes have permitted even finer analysis (psychographic segmentation basis). Frank et al. (14) provide a comprehensive review of these develop ments. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.