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.