Market segmentation is becoming very familiar and essential to every marketer in the process of designing and implementing an effective target-marketing strategy. It is confirmed in the grocery retail industry about the importance of appropriate market segmentation. In this industry, customer purchasing behavior needs to be acknowledged not only in specific products, but also the interaction among the whole range of products. Therefore, the motivation for this thesis is to discover a segmentation based on this purchasing behavior among whole range of products, which is called purchasing pattern. The Purchasing pattern is interpreted by purchasing portfolios, which include list of categories that a certain customer purchases and also consumption behavior on these categories.This thesis is acknowledged from related theories to design a theoretical model of market segmentation based on purchasing portfolios. Then, data mining techniques are applied to process a practical database in order to test the theory’s hypotheses, as well as illustrate for the model.As a result, the availability of segmentation is verified from a technical view and the practical significance of segmentation is confirmed from a marketing view. The result from data mining has shown four segments from the analysis of purchasing portfolios. These four segments cover most of the market, and remain over time. The segmentation is assessed from marketing view to be appropriate for practical application.Furthermore, there are three segments that are selected to be analyzed further. They represent three distinct purchasing behaviors. Three specific purchasing portfolios are built for each segment, which can be used to direct for marketing strategy.

Background – Increase in global competition, technological changes and demanding customers have resulted in more knowledge-intensive, unstable, complicated and an uncertain environment. In order to overcome these demand uncertainties and tough circumstances, manufacturers are required to investigate methods to increase flexibility. To achieve the flexibility improvements, each component of supply chain such as suppliers, manufacturing plants, warehouses, and distributors must possess the potential to be flexible. Theory implies that the main link between company’s upstream supply chain namely suppliers and its own business unit are the sourcing strategy. Usually sourcing practitioners distinguish between sourcing strategies using portfolio models. They normally categorize purchased items based on the strategic importance of the item and characteristics of its supply market. It is a critical issue to explore how different sourcing strategies, for different categories of procured items, can influence sourcing flexibility. Purpose– The purpose has been diagnosed as to study how the prerequisites of Bombardier’s procurement procedures along with its associated strategies, can affect the flexibility that can be provided through sourcing namely sourcing flexibility. This study desires to investigate the concept of sourcing flexibility with considerations on category level. It can be beneficial to investigate how different strategies, related to different categories of procured component, can influence the level of sourcing flexibility specified to that category. This would lead us to two key questions: How can sourcing flexibility be defined in Bombardier and why is it required? How can sourcing strategies influence sourcing flexibility considering different categories of components? Methodology– To provide appropriate definitions for sourcing flexibility and strategic procurement, this study went through a comprehensive review on the relevant literatures. By a deep analysis, accompanied with several unstructured interviews on one of the undergoing projects in the company, the drivers for the sourcing flexibility have been diagnosed. The procured components have been categorized into four categories of strategic, bottleneck, leverage, and noncritical through 4 different structured quantitative questionnaires. 33 diverse individuals with purchasing and/or engineering background answered those questionnaires. The categorization criteria have been extracted out from two models suggested by Kraljic (1983) and Olsen & Ellram (1997). Four independent components, one from each category, were selected for further observations. Finally, the links between sourcing strategies and sourcing flexibilities were expansively analyzed through 9 semi structured interviews with company’s strategic purchasers and suppliers’ representatives. Conclusion– Sourcing flexibility can be defined from two perspectives. First one refers to the capability of the focal firm to change the structure of its upstream supply chain. Second aspect refers to the ability of company’s suppliers to provide it with flexibility in three dimensions of delivery, volume and product. Both two aspects along with related dimensions can be measured in three different conditions of required, actual and potential by using range, mobility and uniformity as measuring elements. The results showed that the first perspective has a direct relationship to the sourcing strategies that focal firm may apply for different categories of procured component. Furthermore, the availability of second perspective is highly dependent on the relationship between the focal company and its suppliers, where strategic procurement plays an indispensable role. Based on the results the required level of sourcing flexibility, related to each category, differs significantly with other categories. The findings also suggested that the levels of delivery, volume and product flexibility have a close connection to the diverse strategies and attributes of the four different categories. Additionally they are well dependent on the internal operational capabilities of the suppliers along with the established relationship between buyer and supplier. Originality/Value– Main portions of previous studies have explored the concepts of sourcing flexibility and strategic procurement separately. Although, there exists some narrow numbers that have analyzed the relationship between sourcing strategies and sourcing flexibility to some limited extent. This study tries to contribute to the existing literature by empirically exploring the principal reasons for companies necessitating to increase sourcing flexibility. It investigates how sourcing flexibility can be improved through strategic procurement. The main contribution is to consider sourcing flexibility from the category perspective. Latter is a subject that has been neglected in the previous literatures. It is extremely hard to find literature which has analyzed sourcing flexibility at the category level. This report analyses the level of sourcing flexibility specified to different categories of strategic, bottleneck, leverage, and noncritical components. It suggests some factors that may influence the selection of a specific sourcing flexibility strategy regarding different component categories. Finally, it may introduce some extra elements that can be influential on the level of sourcing flexibility dimensions. Some examples of those influential elements are bargaining power and establishment of a close relationship.

[pt] Com a dinâmica da economia mundial e a crescente competitividade nos mercados, a área de compras ganha relevância e torna temas como risco de fornecimento, redução de custos, características do mercado fornecedor, parcerias estratégicas, entre outros, presentes no dia a dia das empresas. Neste cenário, uma estratégia de compras bem definida faz diferença. O desenvolvimento de uma estratégia de compras é complexo, pois as empresas lidam com uma grande variedade de itens e serviços, muitos fornecedores, bem como situações de compras heterogêneas e, por esses motivos, precisam de ferramentas analíticas avançadas para desenvolver estratégias eficazes. Devido a isso, existem várias metodologias que suportam este processo, como Análise SWOT, Cinco Forças de Porter e Portfólio de Compras. Apesar de ser relevante o portfólio de compras no desenvolvimento das estratégias, pouco se conhece sobre a real aderência dos mesmos na prática. Essa dissertação traz conceitos da literatura acadêmica sobre os portfólios de compras e apresenta um estudo de caso prático, sobre a utilização do mesmo no desenvolvimento da estratégia, dentro de uma grande empresa do setor de mineração. Com este trabalho pretende-se esclarecer para a literatura como o modelo de portfólio de compras é utilizado para o desenvolvimento de estratégias na prática, identificando as adaptações necessárias para torná-los aderentes a uma situação real. Também pretende-se identificar se existe alguma oportunidade de aperfeiçoamento do portfólio de compras utilizado pela organização corporativa estudada. / [en] With the dynamics of global economy and the increasing market competitiveness, procurement becomes more relevant making subjects like supply risk, cost reduction, supplier market characteristics, strategic partnerships, among others, present in the business day life. In scenario like this, a good purchasing strategy makes the difference. Developing a purchasing strategy is complex as companies deal with a great variety of items and services, as well as diversified purchasing situations, therefore, it is required to have advanced analytical tools in order to develop efficient strategies. Based on this, several methodologies support this process such as SWOT Analysis, the Porter s Five Forces and the Purchasing Portfolio. Despite the relevance of purchasing portfolio use in strategies development, there is little knowledge regarding its practical use. This dissertation brings concepts over the purchasing portfolio, presenting a practical case study on its use for strategy development within a big mining company. This work goal is to seek literature clearance of how Purchasing Portfolio is use in practical strategy development; identifying variation needs to adapt them into real situations. Furthermore, we expect to identify if there is any new improvement opportunity for the Purchasing Portfolio used in the corporate organization studied.