Burke Research Seminar – Market Segmentation & Positioning
Co-sponsored by 3M & The Research Edge

Register before April 16 to save $100!

Segmenting and positioning your markets and targeting your customers have never been more important. Doing it properly is critical when budgets are tight and you must make the best use of limited funds.

Designed for marketing professionals, particularly market researchers, market managers and others who must segment and position their offerings, this seminar will focus on planning and executing segmentation projects, application of segmentation research, analytical options in segmentation research, and positioning research.

What you’ll learn:

1. Why it is critically important to segment your markets, select the most profitable targets and position your product/service appropriately in the chosen markets.
2. How to design marketing research studies from start to finish to segment markets and which commercial data sources are available to help you segment your markets.
3. How to select the best analytical tools for segmenting markets and how to implement results from segmentation studies.
4. Segmentation on a tight budget, decisions to help lower the costs and alternative options to a full blown segmentation study
5. How to develop a successful step by step approach to positioning research in your organization.
6. How to analyze and interpret positioning data in a competitive setting and how to create and analyze perceptual maps using multivariate analysis techniques.

About the Burke Institute:
For the past 30 years, The Burke Institute has trained more than 70,000 marketing research practitioners from around the world, through both public and in-house customized marketing research seminars. Burke presents an unbiased look at various research practices, not just the proprietary viewpoints of a specific supplier. Since this day is a combination of a couple of Burke’s classes given over several days, they will cover the original topics in a bit less breadth to customize it for our one-day session. Take advantage of the AMA and the Burke Institute collaboration to save you travel cost, time, and effort by attending this seminar in the Twin Cities. Please visit http://www.burkeinstitute.com/ for more information.

About the co-sponsors:
As a recognized leader in research and development, 3M produces thousands of innovative products for dozens of diverse markets. 3M’s core strength is applying its more than 40 distinct technology platforms—often in combination—to a wide array of customer needs. Research Edge is a full service provider of market research which focuses on helping you keep your competitive edge.

Register early - limited to 30 people. Deadline: April 23, 2009

Seminar outline

• PLANNING AND EXECUTING SEGMENTATION PROJECTS: Why segment markets? Application of segmentation to marketing theory and strategy. Setting objectives to ensure a successful segmentation project. Selecting the basis of segmentation. Data collection issues. Analytical techniques and alternatives for identifying segments: clustering, k-means, latent class.
   
• APPLICATION OF SEGMENTATION RESEARCH: “Live” case study segmenting seminar participants. Interpreting and naming segments. Techniques to improve actionability of segmentation projects. Profiling and prioritizing market segments. Segmentation on a tight budget, decisions to help lower the costs and alternative options to a full blown segmentation study.
   
• ANALYTICAL OPTIONS IN SEGMENTATION RESEARCH: Selecting the appropriate analysis techniques for apriori segmentation research; capsule descriptions of the most useful procedures, when and how to use them. Selecting the appropriate multivariate analysis techniques for post-hoc segmentation; case studies of conjoint analysis, factor, cluster and mixture models in post-hoc segmentation research. Attitude vs. benefit segmentation; need vs. occasion based segmentation.
   
• NEXT STEPS – POSITIONING RESEARCH: the decisions which must be made to properly position/reposition a brand/product/service/organization and the actionable information which is needed to make those decisions; how to identify the relevant set of competitive products and services and how to assess their relative strengths, weaknesses and positioning. Direct vs. derived approaches and assessing congruence between customer perceived positioning and the intended positioning. Attribute based and attribute free approaches to assessing positioning of an organization; how to create, interpret and implement snake plots, spider charts, quadmaps and perceptual maps to enhance their usefulness as a positioning tool; incorporating stated vs. implied importance of attributes and competitive strengths and weaknesses in a comprehensive representation; assessing positioning differences by market segments.

Meeting Specifics

Date and Time
Thursday, May 7, 2009
8:30 AM – 5:00 PM

Location
3M Innovation Center
Bldg. 278, 3M Center
2350 Minnehaha Ave.
St Paul, MN, 55121

Cost
$495: AMA/MRA Member (before April 16)                                    
$595: AMA/MRA Member (after April 16)

$595: Guest (April 16)
$695: Guest (after April 16)

Registration Deadline: April 23, 2009. Registration is limited to the first 30 people. Payment is required in advance. No refunds will be given after April 23.

REGISTER ONLINE HERE