ABSTRACT
Companies looking to succeed need to understand their customers and consumers, their present needs, their stage of life and their consumption values. Different industries and firms will usually service one segment more than the others. But even for niche businesses some form of cus tomer segmentation will almost certainly be necessary to ensure long term survival. In Chapters 3, 4 and 5 the contributors analyse different strategies for segmenting customers and the ways in which the supply chain can address their needs, across everything from the needs of dif ferent categories of beer customers, right through to understanding the segment-of-one and implementation of mass customization.
