The Market Segmentation Company
The Market Segmentation Company (tMSC) was established in 1995 by Malcolm McDonald, until 2003 Professor of Marketing and Deputy Director Cranfield University School of Management in the UK, where he is now an Emeritus Professor, and Ian Dunbar*, a leading practitioner in customer focused segmentation. Our team also includes Marcus Clark who has been working along with Malcolm McDonald since 1994 and is a leading practitioner in strategic marketing and business. We provide a centre of expertise and a resource pool for companies wanting to conduct market segmentation projects and then position these segments at the heart of their marketing strategy.
At the core of our work is the only fully documented practical approach to customer focused segmentation, an approach designed to identify which groups of customers the organization should be targeting and the propositions it should offer in order to generate the greatest contribution to a company's shareholder value.
Successful segmentation projects require a rigorously planned structure as well as time. Our approach provides the structure and the detailed framework for your project plan. In addition, our people can either complement your in-company resources, working alongside the selected team on a segmentation project, or take on the segmentation project on behalf of your company (though we would insist on engaging key personnel at strategically important stages of the project).
Assignments approached as a partnership, working with our client companies as part of a team, enabling our skills to become embodied in the team and the IP resident within the client company.
A high level of integrity established through working with our client companies rather than for a consultancy firm.
Experience with the internal company barriers that can stifle implementation thus ensuring they are addressed at their less damaging stages.
Our approach is based on the belief that the objective of segmentation must be to win and retain profitable customers and this clearly requires the company to understand what propositions it must offer in order to attract the customers it wants. This means that segmentation has to be based around a detailed understanding of the criteria customers use to choose between competing offers. You can then see what each segment is looking for, how good you are at delivering it (competitively) and whether this will produce the profits you require, with profitability measured by customer as opposed to product/service. In summary, segmentation is more productive when built around customer needs, with the challenge being to find better ways of satisfying their needs.
Segments developed along these lines become the underlying structure for your business strategy. It is also how customers divide into segments, and they do not change their behaviour simply because a company chooses to segment them another way.
— chemical company (market regarded as commoditized)
– financial services company
— manufacturer of non-metallic mineral products (regarded as commoditized) just breaking even
Business sector experience
We do not claim to know as much as you do about your particular business sector, we trust that you have enough of this expertise residing in your own organization's people and do not require any more. What we bring is an expertise in segmentation which, when combined with your own business sector knowledge, will uncover how the customers in your market split into segments. At the core of our process is the toolkit for understanding customers and their buying criteria. It therefore does not have any business sector boundaries.
Company contact information — UK and international
