Week 7 Reading Reflection

What surprised me the most in this weeks reading was the over all ineffectiveness of traditional market segmentation.  I have always heard of market segmentation being used in the sort of "cut and dry" way and always assumed that it was an effective tool. What really illustrated this too me was that only 14% of the senior executives surveyed believed they received benefit from the segmentation exercise.

What confused me the most is that segmentation is still in such wide use despite the fact that it has been proven to be largely ineffective. Surely in today's highly competitive market experienced executives would understand that the techniques for identifying customer groups most be updated to match the current market conditions

The questions I would ask to the author would involve the best methods of identifying profitable customer groups. The authors indicated that one must be selective in prioritizing market groups, but in that scenario who can you be sure that a segment isn't being overlooked that could potentially be more profitable. I know in my own experiences this can be a challenge.

I did not find anything in the reading that I would say the author was wrong about. I found this article to be very informative and admittedly has changed my perception on the methods needed to understand who your customer is and what their needs are. 

Elevator Pitch No. 2

The two criticisms I gathered from the comments left in the last video concerned price points and dynamics. While the primary clientele of any sign shop is business customers, my company will also cater to consumers. As far as dynamics go I would agree that in the first pitch I was very sedentary, and I tried to rectify that in this video but it still isn't perfect. I also tried to avoid directly naming any existing competitors in this video. Watching the first video now a couple of weeks later that part sounded too arrogant for someone making a pitch to investors. Overall the feedback I received was supportive and interesting and provided a great help in further refining my pitch.