Customer positioning preferences are reported in the Buying Criteria boxes in The Capstone® Courier’s Market Segment Analyses. These locations, or ideal spots, drift with the segments. The Buying Criteria report the preferred size and performance for each segment as of December 31 of the previous year.

The importance of positioning varies from segment to segment. For example, positioning is the most important buying criteria for High End customers, but it is less important to Traditional and Low End customers.

Table 8.1 Ideal Spot Offsets: Customers prefer products located
this distance from the center of the segment circle.

Within each segment, the ideal spot is at a location relative to the center of the circle. These locations, or offsets, appear in Table 8.1. For example, Traditional customers prefer products at the exact center of the Traditional circle (the offsets for performance and size are both 0.0). The center of the Traditional segment in Figure 8.1 has a size of 15 and a performance of 5. Mark that approximate location on Figure 8.1 with a pen or pencil. Use Table 8.1 to determine the approximate ideal spot locations for the remaining segments and mark them on Figure 8.1.

Figure 8.1 Use the information in Table 8.1 and mark the approximate location of each segment’s ideal spot relative to each segment’s center (indicated by the blue X marks).
 

Tip: Some segments place a higher level of importance on positioning than others.