Alignment and Coordination of Customer Segmentation, Distribution Channel Segmentation and Overall Strategy of the Firm. A Qualitative Study on Sporting Goods Industry

The modern term of segmentation in marketing and sales can be observed in markets all over the world. In many established European markets a hyper-segmentation (Perez, 2008; Berghoff, 2007) is surpassing this development already. The term of hyper-segmentation expresses the tendency of a market allocation in too many subsegments or small niches. Facing a highly competitive market environment, producers are confronted with limited or declining market shares as well as constant pressure on product prices and costs. 'Blue Oceans' (Kim & Mauborgne, 005), thestill unexploited markets, are the desire of any sales oriented company. Discovering these Blue Oceans is demanding and entering them requires a considerable initial funding.