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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Identifying the Coarse and Fine Structures of Market Segments
Contributor:
Dowling, Grahame R.;
Midgley, David F.
Published:
Wiley, 1988
Published in:
Decision Sciences, 19 (1988) 4, Seite 830-847
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1111/j.1540-5915.1988.tb00306.x
ISSN:
0011-7315;
1540-5915
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
ABSTRACTNumerical taxonomy methods have been used to represent marketing data in one of four ways: as discrete groups, dendograms, overlapping groups, or fuzzy classification schemes. This paper introduces a fifth representation—a nested relationship between groups at two (or more) discontinuous levels of aggregation. In the context of a market segmentation application, we call these groups the coarse and fine structures of the market. This paper discusses why this fifth representation is needed and how it differs from existing approaches. The method is illustrated by using it to recover the coarse/fine structures of artificial and actual survey data. The results obtained with the survey data demonstrate the theoretical and practical power of the proposed approach, which provides useful insight into certain marketing decisions. Steps to further validate and extend this new approach to market segmentation are outlined.