Marketing indicators are often lagging indicators. And all this analysis is lagging indicators, so when you are a cutting-edge company and you're trying to be ahead of the market, you've got an interesting problem in that you're relying on lagging indicators to do that. And sometimes things don' t gel, because you're trying to build a new value proposition and sometimes you have to go on a gut infusion about what the customer really wants. So you have to go out on a limb. That's the problem I have with segmentation.
Segmentation works in very stable companies.
But when you're dealing with unstable environments, or rapidly morphing environments, segmentation really doesn't make a Hell of a lot of sense. And I don't think in segmentation literature they make that distinction. I was struck by this because it seems somewhat contradictory to what we're hearing from other folks who are emphasizing this as an absolute key to moving your business forward. I really don't know if we've found a way to leverage this segmented knowledge. Banks are a good example.