Industry 4.0 Customer Classification Model (CCM)

Industry 4.0 is currently mostly a buzzword and only a few companies are able to use it to the full extend. Among other reasons, this is due to the lack of knowledge and experience with the technologies that Industry 4.0 incorporates. Especially, for companies that develop build and distribute such technologies Industry 4.0 poses a challenge. For marketing these so called smart products successfully, firms must develop tailor made marketing and sales strategies. However, before any marketing strategy can be developed, first, corporations will have to understand their customers and their situation. Considering the novelty of Industry 4.0, the needs and characteristics of customers are unknown. Consequently, customer segments cannot be identified in an easy manner. The subject of this report is to identify possible ways of clustering customers to allow a proper segmenting, targeting and positioning process by the selling organization. Furthermore, possible criteria with high relevance regarding Industry 4.0 for grouping customers should be found as well. Thus, the goal is to provide firms with a comprehensive framework to develop tailor-made marketing and sales strategies.