In the just-published anthology Leading Edge Marketing Research: 21st-Century Tools and Practices, Copernicus’ Kevin Clancy and Ami Bowen make the case to marketers that a truly state-of-the-science approach to market segmentation focuses as much on ensuring the relevance and applicability of the outcome to fundamental strategic decisions as it does on the technical complexity of the algorithm or analytical technique used to sort buyers into groups.

The duo contributed Chapter 6, “State-of-the-Science Market Segmentation: Making Results Actionable for Marketers,” to the book, interweaving the thinking and tools that guide our market segmentation and targeting strategy work at Copernicus with client case studies and examples ripped from the headlines of the business press.

“For approximately 50 years,” Kevin and Ami begin their chapter, “knowledge of how a market segments and what constitutes a good market target has been the sine qua non of marketing strategy. No wonder most marketing textbooks include among their introductory chapters a discussion of market segmentation and targeting.”

“Yet some in the research industry say market segmentation is no longer relevant in today’s marketplace. We say unless it achieves state-of-the-science standards of actionability, it probably isn’t.”

With an eye towards who within an organization will use the results and how they will use them, along with clever measures of profitability and a range of descriptive variables to test, the two describe how marketers can tap into the full potential of this critical strategic research tool to improve performance and ROI.

They join nearly 40 other authors–many considered visionaries in the field of research and marketing–providing rich new tools to measure and analyze consumer attitudes, combined with existing databases, online bulletin boards, social media, neuroscience, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, behavioral economics, and more.

To learn more about Leading Edge Marketing Research and order a copy, visit Amazon.com.