How do you define primary, secondary and tertiary markets?

Was wondering the other day what criteria or attributes do you use to classify the market you're working on? I've read some articles and forums here base it on a number of different things, such as population alone, infrastructure, potential economic growth. Does a market become secondary automatically when its next to a primary market? For example, is a suburb of San Francisco or New York considered secondary or tertiary? I mean if you have people living in one of those suburbs but working in the downtown core of one of those primary markets how is it classified?

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In my opinion, a market can have several submarkets. So, to your point, while LA, NY and SF are primary markets, the Inland Empire in LA is a submarket for LA and a secondary or tertiary market within the LA region. What do ya'll think? Its pretty subjective right?

 
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