FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – September 10, 2003

CONTACTS: Carrie Krysanick, Dan Pinger Public Relations, ckrysan@danpinger.com 513/419-7007 or

Nancy Bunn, Burke, Inc., nancy.bunn@burke.com 513/684-7509

SEGUE^Ô TO PAVE THE WAY TO BETTER MARKET SEGMENTATION

Burke Inc. announces new method to make segmentation research more actionable

CINCINNATI -- Burke Inc., an international leader in strategic decision support services, introduces SEGUE^Ô, a new proprietary market segmentation method. SEGUE combines Burke’s world-class technical and analytical skills with experience-based insights to help fine tune segmentation research.

"A common downfall of segmentation research is that the segments derived are not as actionable as desired," said Jim Roberts, vice president of marketing. "This may happen because there are not very clear distinctions across segments on variables such as demographics or key behaviors that allow companies to best locate individuals in order to target them with marketing efforts. SEGUE is designed to overcome these problems.”

With SEGUE, Burke experts combine information from both customer attitudes and demographic profiles to more accurately predict how potential buyers will respond to marketing efforts. According to Roberts, “The best measure of how much SEGUE improves our clients’ marketing efficiency is demonstrated by how much we can increase a marketer’s power to accurately target the best market segments.”

Applying SEGUE in a project completed for a pharmaceutical firm, Burke improved the client's ability to accurately target the most appropriate market segments by 81 percent. In another situation for a client producing personal care products, the improvement in targeting accuracy was 77 percent.

These are very important improvements for real world marketing action. Marketers want to classify people into segments as correctly and efficiently as possible in order to get the most bang for the buck from marketing budgets.

Said Roberts, “By improving the power to accurately target segments, we improve the ability to deliver the right messages, samples, products, etc. to the ‘right’ people. Being able to more accurately target marketing actions based on limited information translates directly into better financial results by reaching more of the ‘right’ people and fewer of the ‘wrong’ people.”

For more information on SEGUE and other Burke Inc. decision support services, visit www.burke.com.

# # #

Editor’s Note: Founded in 1931, and headquartered in Cincinnati, Burke, Inc. operates in 50+ countries, with international work coordinated from Cincinnati, Munich, and London. U.S. work is managed from offices in 18 major markets. Burke combines competencies across practice areas to offer a broad range of decision support services for marketing, operations, quality and human resources. Burke acquires, integrates, analyzes, and applies knowledge across the entire business enterprise. Services include custom marketing research, customer loyalty and relationship programs, employee engagement and retention programs, strategic and organizational consulting, linkage and integration services, online research and reporting, qualitative research, international research and training programs in marketing research.

> >