Use Blueprinter Tool 1.3 to prepare the criteria you'll use to select your target market segment.
Let’s say you have a list of possible market segments to pursue, before beginning your front-end-of-innovation customer interviews. (If you don’t, see the BlueHelp article, How to segment markets.) If you make corrugated packaging, these segments might include packaging for beverages, frozen food, chemicals, e-commerce, etc. How will you decide which to pursue in your project? You’d naturally ask questions such as, “How big is this market?... How fast is it growing?...” These are your selection criteria.
You can use Blueprinter Tool 1.3: Prepare Selection Criteria (at www.blueprintingcenter.com > Blueprinter software) to consider the most relevant criteria for your project. Make sure you do this as a team. Hopefully you have a multi-functional new-product project team, as their diverse views will be very helpful for this. You’ll see many possible criteria in Blueprinter Tool 1.3, such as...
- Size of revenue opportunity
- Market segment growth
- Likely technical fit
- Existing market presence
- Exposure to liabilities
- Speed to market
- Ease of securing interviews
It’s a good idea for your team to limit itself to 6-to-8 criteria: More than this is too hard to mentally process. For each criterion, establish three levels of attractiveness. For the criterion, “market segment growth,” perhaps an “A” is an annual growth rate greater than 6%… a “B” is 4-6%, and a “C” is 3% or less. For “Existing market presence,” your “A” might be “We are a strong supplier,” your “B” could be, “This market knows us,” and a “C” would be “Unfamiliar to us.”
Once your team has settled on its selection criteria, it will use these to pick a target market. (See next BlueHelp article, Selecting your target market segment.)
Keywords: market segment, Blueprinter Tool 1.3, market selection criteria, size of revenue opportunity, market segment growth, profitability of suppliers, unmet customer needs, likely value proposition, likely technical fit, existing market presence.