SEGMENTING THE GLOBAL MARKET FOR INDUSTRIAL GOODS: ISSUES AND IMPLICATIONS

Although the viability of global marketing is disputed, the best opportunities for pursuing basically the same strategy across national borders are in industrial marketing. However, because of the disparities across world markets, segmentation is essential to assessing opportunities for a standardised marketing approach. Segmentation based on economic indicators represents the first step in identifying potential markets. In this study, 96 countries were grouped into six segments. Implications for industrial marketers are presented, along with issues relating to using stages of economic development as a basis for segmentation and using a factor analytic and clustering approach to the segmentation of the global market.