The Brand Flip: Why customers now run companies and how to profit from it

CUSTOMER SEGMENTS ↬ CUSTOMER TRIBES

Segmentation is a handy strategy for targeting customers in an existing market. You identify a large market, then cut it up into smaller slices according to categories such as geography (regions, countries, cities), demographics (age, gender, occupation, education, income), psycho-graphics (activities, interests, opinions), behavior (product usage, familiarity, loyalty), or benefit preference (one segment per preference). Then you target each chunk with a different offering. Divide and conquer.

But how do you segment a market that doesn’t exist yet? Or a quickly changing market where customers are moving targets? Or a market in which every customer wants to be his or her own segment? You have to flip your ...