P Millier’s research while affiliated with École Centrale de Lyon and other places

This paper concerns the implementation of segmentation within a business-to-business organisation. There is wide agreement that segmentation is a fundamental component of marketing strategy. Numerous methods are identified, but there is little guidance on how segmentation can be applied in practice. Four barriers to implementation are identified. The notion of intuition has been applied in the segmentation of emerging markets for technologically based products. This work is extended into established markets using an inductive methodology and adopts an action learning approach to incorporate managerial experience into the process, illustrated by a case study. Several opportunities for further research arise.

The generic ?stage and gate process? is popularly accepted as a means for managing new product development. It advocates that a development project is divided into a series of pre-defined decision steps in order to balance investment against perceived market risk and return. Its use implies a number of assumptions ? first that the product can be characterized as having features and customers benefits; and second that the market for such a product is identifiable. This paper describes a process to assist decision making where these two assumptions do not apply. It provides suggestions to assist in the management and development of innovation and new technology, advocating that a marketing-based perspective of supply-led innovation is adopted. Copyright

Do writers in the area of marketing use and learn from the lessons they teach to others? This question is raised after noting the contradictions between the contents of books on the subject of marketing and the day-to-day concerns suggested by industrial marketers. This article draws on the results of research carried out among 30 European marketing managers (Germany, France, UK, Sweden). This research shows firstly how these managers perceive the marketing literature. The paper then generalises some principles to improve the correspondence between the contents of books and the expectations of industrial marketers.