Targeting the Switchable Industrial Customer

This article presents a new approach to target marketing. An industrial market for electrical equipment is segmented on the basis of the strength of current preferences as defined by the probabilities of selecting the various suppliers. A modification of a disaggregate attribute choice model logit is used to identify the firm's “switchable” customers. The “switchable” customers are then targeted by direct personalized mail and visits by a “missionary” sales force. A major supplier of large-scale electrical equipment utilized this methodology with impressive sales results.

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