Consider the overall market for beverages in the US. This market consists of both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. Within the alcoholic portion of the market there are a large range on different types of alcoholic drinks, including wines, beers, hard liquors, etc. In addition, each of these later alcoholic lines of beverages can be further subdivided. For example, beers can be, as a minimum, divided into ales and lagers, with many subcategories within these broader groups. If one is seeking to enter the beer brewing business and is conducting an MOA, they might define the category of ales to be:

The Market Opportunity Analysis or MOA is a tool used to identify market opportunities and measure them to determine if they can be profitable for the company before the firm starts planning to work with it. The MOA implements segmentation to classify as specific as possible the product that is intended to be offered.

Micro-segments refer to products with narrow scopes while macro-segment products have wider reach and variability inherent. Thus, in the example, ales represent the macro-segment since it has varieties such as brown ale, pale ale, golden ale, Scotch ale, and mild ale just to mention a few.