the Web Chef's e-Bytes

Where the Guys and Gals are...

Richard Florida, author of "The Rise of the Creative Class" and "Who's Your City?" has posted some very interesting demographic information profiling cities by their balance of men to women.  The map is intriguing in that it shows a pronounced east west divide with more single women east of that line and more single men west of that mythical line.  Data is for singles ages 20 - 64.   

I'd love to see an overlay of other geodemographic information about women-owned businesses, patent filings etc. to see how this correlates with other business information.

The data has some interesting implications for consumer marketers targeting singles of either gender.

B2B Market Segmentation

Forrester's new marketing blog has an interesting discussion of market segmentation in B2B that references segmentation by "personas".  They claim that most B2B marketers use traditional segmentation criteria like size, industry or geography (I was surprised they didn't specifically mention NAICS code) and haven't yet embraced creating personas to help understand the individual member of the buying team's role, demographics, behavior or preferences.  Most B2B marketers have also not segmented based on where the buyers are at in the buying cycle.  This segmentation could be quite useful for determining the best way to connect with business customers.

The Library of Congress has reference on market segmentation, but unfortunately it doesn't really cover business market segmentation.