Lecture 9: Market Segmentation with SensAble Technologies, Part I

What this lecture covers

This lecture applies the market segmentation process from earlier lectures to a real case: SensAble Technologies, a company Aulet co-founded with Thomas Massie around a 3D haptic interface that let users feel virtual objects. He describes how the team built a brainstormed list of possible markets and began organizing it into a structured matrix.

Watching this shows what market segmentation looks like in practice, translating the abstract process into a specific technology and set of candidate customers.

Key ideas

• The technology: a robotic 3D interface, similar to a 3D mouse, that let users feel and manipulate virtual objects, enabling gaming, medical simulation, and accessibility uses for blind users.
• Brainstorming markets: the team generated a long, sometimes unrealistic, list of possible applications before narrowing it down.
• Segmentation matrix: markets were broken down by industry, then further by end user, since the industry level alone was too broad to be useful.
• Animator example: within the entertainment industry, the relevant end user was identified as animators at studios such as Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic, and Disney.
• Application-level detail: for each end user, the team specified the exact application, such as sculpting or painting in three dimensions, and the specific benefits the device provided.

Before you watch

• Watch "How to Do Market Segmentation" and "What is a Beachhead Market" first, since this lecture is a worked example of the process they describe.

Check your understanding

1. Why was breaking the entertainment industry down to "animator" more useful than stopping at the industry level?
2. What made the SensAble haptic device applicable to such a wide range of markets?
3. What categories of information did the team capture for each candidate market in their matrix?