Strategy - Customer Segmentation

Global market have been revolutionized from sellers market to buyers market and this phenomenon have brought several changes, now Customer is the king and he is a reason behind existence of every individual organization. Customer is aware of his status and thus makes all organizations run after him, so that he is pleased and add some value to their balance sheets.
Every organization strives hard and spend millions to understand and segment its customer and his ever-changing needs.
There are as many ways of segmenting the customer as the number of marketer’s and uniqueness of each of them can’t be questioned though the objective behind them remains the same – “Customer Satisfaction”.

According to me, customers should be segmented on the basis of their bonding with the organization (bond as a result of customer satisfaction with serving organization).

Considering an organization I classify customers into four broad categories-
1) Loyalist – These are our biggest advocates and spreads all good things about us, they are highly bonded to us and are generally unavailable to other organization. They even move ahead and help company in increasing their customer base and should be the focus for any organization.

2) Hostages – These are the customers who are at immediate risk, these customers have taken our service at some point and are dissatisfied at present. They can switch but are not able to switch due some of their reasons hence they are the target for competition.
Its relatively easy and economic to convert this set of people to loyalist then to add up new loyalist customer. It should be the top-most priority for organization to listen their voice and reason behind dissatisfaction. Timely solution leads to sustainable future.
3) Shoppers – These are the customers who are never loyal to any of the organization, they always hunt for the best deal. Organizations with large base of Shopper customer at a points cannot be sure of sustainable future.
4) Terrorists – This set of customer is always good in the camp of our competition (contradicting with what I said earlier "Customer is King", but he should be treated as king till he behaves like a king), they are always unhappy and spread all bad things about organization. They are a serious threat and it’s always better to avoid such a customer as soon as possible (even if it cost something).
Availability of one terrorist customer nullifies the availability of three loyalist customers in our camp, thus it’s a huge cost to retain terrorist set of customer.

I have shared what I like the most, though there may be difference of opinions, it would be great if you share your outlook on the topic … so just post a comment.