Industry Applications 

Consumer and Patient Market Segmentations 
NAXION has developed segmentations for a very broad spectrum of consumer applications based on purchase or usage occasions, purchase needs and motivations, and demographic or behavioral variables to ensure that products and services are properly designed for, and effectively promoted to, the market segments that will value them most. Our consumer market segmentations include assignments to guide DTC and DTP initiatives in the pharmaceutical industry where patient empowerment requires more direct dialogue between marketers and patients.
 
Business 2 Business Market Segmentation
A particular challenge posed in business market segmentation is the need to accommodate complex decision process, often involving multiple decision-makers and stakeholders. We have decades of experience working with leading business marketers in the IT, Energy, Industrial, Financial, and Business service arenas, to create powerful, actionable segmentations for Business 2 Business market environments — with a track record of success that has earned us a reputation as "best-in-class" with clients throughout the world.
 
Medical Market Segmentation
In an era of limited customer access, an effective sales targeting strategy requires reliable segment assignment without squandering scarce attention and critical selling time. It is all the more important, then, that practitioners of market segmentation in the healthcare arena set clear, concrete and realistic objectives for segmentation, select task appropriate tools and set reasonable standards for success. 
 
NAXION brings together a unique set of tools and perspectives that maximize the likelihood clients will extract full value from their segmentation initiatives – whether directed to healthcare professionals, healthcare institutions, patients, or any other type of healthcare decision-maker. 
 
  • Specialized healthcare experience unmatched for its historical perspective, clinical sophistication, and breadth
  • A commitment to helping clients set business-relevant research agendas and an unshrinking candor in helping them to decide when and how segmentation will help them reach their goals
  • Breadth of segmentation experience drawn from multiple industries to produce a truly rich inventory of "best practices"
  • Leading edge techniques (like our Hypredictive® service) that customize segmentation to balance marketing insight and targeting success
 

Types of Segmentation 

Hybrid Segmentations
To overcome some of the predictive limitations of pure attitude segmentation schemes, Hybrid segmentations create a marketing framework based on a combination of customer attributes that often include demographics (or firmographics), behaviors and needs or attitudes.  
 
Tiered or Dynamic Segmentations
When hybrid segmentations are too diffuse or heterogeneous to support highly customized or highly granular marketing treatments, "hierarchical" or “dynamic” segmentation models can be developed to allow users access to alternative market perspectives for different applications. The result is a holistic yet flexible market framework that simultaneously meets the needs of different users within an organization or can be tuned at will to focus on specific marketing issued and organizational offering sufficient granularity Sales, Syndicated or Big Database Segmentation.
 
Where transactional data are available, we can develop segmentation developed primarily around those data inputs. Utilizing CART and other predictive techniques, we can also integrate survey data (or other customized data streams) to develop transaction-based models chosen on the basis of their ability to predict receptivity to new products or new methods of customer engagement.
 
Attitudinal and Psychographic Segmentations
With a history of checkered implementation and unrealized expectations, this approach to segmentation has become highly controversial.  Its utility lies in an understanding of what unique value it offers and, equally important, what it cannot deliver. We can help companies decide whether their markets and business objectives quality them as candidates for this approach, and how to set organizational expectations to maximize odds of success.
 

Techniques and Proprietary Tools

A wide range of techniques are employed to create useful market frameworks, highlighting segments that present unique opportunities based on distinctive behaviors, needs, demographics, or mindsets.
 
Approaches range from simple classification analyses (including CART and CHAID) to more sophisticated clustering techniques (K-means or Latent Class).  Complex multi-tiered or multi-faceted segmentations may require application of a combination of these methodologies.  
 
As a technical innovation leader in the segmentation arena, NAXION has developed a portfolio of state-of-the-art segmentation methodologies that draw on, and enhance, each of these foundational techniques, providing the flexibility to create highly customized solutions for our clients.  What makes this customization possible is an in-house methods and analytics function directed by industry leaders who are able to innovate rather than simply apply off-the-shelf techniques.
 
Our Methods Department is supported by significant annual investments to create the intellectual capital on which leadership depends. The team closely monitors and contributes to ongoing industry dialogue and debate on different segmentation techniques based on a concerted R&D effort that systematically compares outcomes using alternative approaches.  We take pride in segmentations that see active and effective use because they are tailored to each client's objectives with a clear vision about the rationale for segmentation and the ROI it must deliver.
 
Our Hypredictive application makes enormous strides in bridging the gap between theory and marketing application through the use techniques that allow our clients to drive the right balance between segment assignment accuracy and simplicity of use – often a difficult tradeoff for implementation. Hypredictive® enables us to adjust the segment input weights with "joystick" flexibility according to client-guided criteria for insight classification accuracy and efficiency.
 

Implementation Process and Software 

Effective implementation always begins with a “workshop” approach to assimilating segmentation outcomes that help teams internalize customer profiles, understand where those outlines are sharpest, and develop strategy and tactics around them, has developed a broad suite of customized interactive tools to help clients implement segmentation marketing programs.
 
Market Response Simulators
NAXION offers a portfolio of user-friendly interactive simulators designed to predict purchase decisions and identify profit opportunities for both individual customer segments and the market as a whole. These powerful tools can help clients prioritize investment decisions by providing accurate estimates of the sales implications of alternate pricing, promotion, and product/service configuration scenarios among target market segments. Applications are designed to support either enterprise-wide assessments or forecasts within target geographical areas.
 
Sales Support Applications
NA-Sales support applications provide customized desktop or laptop software tools designed to help sales representatives improve sales revenue and cost-per-sale performance. Using segmentation insights, customer information, and/or secondary data, these customized applications classify and prioritize prospects, and provide sales representatives with tailored offers and messages designed to resonate with their specific needs. They can be easily integrated into all mainstream CRM contact management systems.
 
Customer and Prospect Targeting Systems
Our targeting systems harness the power of our proprietary NA-Link®, and NA-QuikLink® modeling suites to provide clients with real-time decision support, enables call centers, websites, direct marketers, and sales representatives to identify key market segments, and to tailor and target offers to maximize marketing ROI. Boasting superior targeting accuracy derived from our state-of-the-art Hypredictive® segmentation techniques, these systems can either be used in stand-alone applications or integrated into ongoing customer information warehouses through the application of database scoring algorithms that we develop. In addition to providing support for broad-based targeting initiatives, these systems and algorithms can be customized to support interactive marketing applications wherein a short battery of questions can be asked to determine an individual customer's (or prospect's) segment membership, identify the best product or service for them, and successfully "customize" and position your offer.