Segmenting the Tourist Market Using Factor- and Cluster Analysis

During recent years life-style segmentation (psychographies) has been a research topic of increasing interest in developing appropriate marketing strategies and target marketing. In a research project, sponsored by the Danish Tourist Council, a sample of 4,000 respondents was interviewed with regard to their vacation and tourist behavior, attitudes and preferences. The data from the section with psychographic variables were factor analyzed. preliminary cluster analysis; of the rawdata matrix (observations x factor scores) indicated that the data structure might be plagued with outliers. Then another cluster analysis was conducted (Anderberg;s nearest centroid sorting) with the aim of detecting outliers. It was suggested that an ; optimal; or ;true; clustering would happen when using 4 clusters. Finally the clusters were interpreted with regard to their socio-demographic behavior and psychographic attitudes, and the results were used in developing marketing strategies in the tourist sector. SAS procedures used analysis: PROC FACTOR,