Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

My problem in short:

For my research i need to segment a B2B market. The following characteristics are often used for this:
- Industry
- Size
- DMU composition
- Geography
Geography isn’t really relevant in this case, but the other three characteristics could be. However I don’t know anything about the DMU composition and size of the companies and I don’t have enough time to research. Out of this list I only can devide the market into segments based on industry. Another relevant way might be a distinguish between commercial and particular. I’m searching for tips or any other relevant ways to segment a B2B market. If you need more information to answer this question, you will find another more detailed description of the context of the case below.


A more detailed discription

Hi there,

My name is Bas. At the moment i'm finishing my Bachelor Business Administration at the University of Twente (the Netherlands). My goal is to create a marketing plan for an online e-ticketsystem which developed by company X
. First I will introduce the context a little so that I can point out my problem better.

The context:
One of the products company X developed is an online e-ticket system. Like the name says, its an online system which means that people or companies who want to organise an event don’t have to buy and install software to sell e-tickets. Everybody (people or organizations) who want to organise an event (like a party or a show) can start selling tickets for that event in about 2 minutes. Besides that there are no ‘start-up’ costs. People or companies who organise an event only pay a small percentage of each ticket they sell. So if they don’t sell a ticket they don’t have to pay anything.
These are the main points from which their e-ticketsystem differs from the competition.
Most of the competition developed a more complex system: If somebody wants to organise an event and sell e-tickets for it, they have to contact the organisation and discuss what they exactly want and need. As a result of that they get a more ‘custom made’ e-ticketsystem. An advantage of this is that the e-ticketsystem could be really suited for your needs but disadvantages are that because of this ‘custom made’ thing there are start-up costs and its takes longer before the system is ready to use.

This is a little bit of info about the supply side of the market. Company X only used this information to develop their e-ticketsystem. They saw the current e-ticketsystems on the market and thought: ‘we can make a better e-ticketsystem’. They didn’t do any market research! The development of the e-ticketsystem is only based on their idea of a good e-ticketsystem.


Current situation
Like I said I want to develop a marketing plan for Company X. To do so I need to get to know the needs and the demands of the demand side of the market with regard to e-ticketing. Because I have too little time to research the whole market I want to divide the market into some segments. After that I want to do some superficial qualitative research to these segments so that I can decide which segments are the most attractive for Company X to focus on. After that I want to do a deeper study to the precise demands of these ‘attractive’ segments.

My problem:
I have problems with the segmentation of the market. Potential customers and current customers can differ from just a random guy who wants to organise a party and sell e-tickets for it, to professional organisations which sell a lot of e-tickets a day (for example cinema’s or theatres). Its likely that these different customers have different demands and needs with regards to e-ticketing.
Concrete: I have problems to find good characteristics which I can use to segment the market. I read that the following characteristics are often used for segmenting a B2B market.
- Industry
- Size
- Geography
- DMU (decision making unit) composition.
In this case I think geography isn’t a relevant way for segmenting. Industry could be a usable way to segment on, cause its likely that cinema’s have the same needs and demands which differ from the demands of the random guy who wants to organise a party.
Because of the fact that company X didn’t do any market research yet I can’t say anything useful about the size of the company other than that some organisations are probably bigger than others. I have the same with the DMU composition. I can’t say anything about that other than that some companies probably have a bigger DMU than others.

For this case, what would be the best way to segment the market? I’m curious about your opinions.