Business to business: Lessons on segmentation and other issues from financial services markets

The aim of this paper is to provide business-to-customer financial services companies with an insight into the relevance of business-to-business segmentation for their companies. The whole area of understanding customers is being turned upside down by rapidly developing new patterns of intermediation, so almost paradoxically there is a much stronger focus today on ‘doing what works’ and ‘doing what is profitable’, rather than trying to optimise. Customers, whether final or intermediary, are simply changing too rapidly to permit the old stable analyses.