| By: |
Pierpaolo D'Urso (Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali ed Economiche, La Sapienza, Roma, Italy);
Girish Prayag (Department of Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, University of Canterbury, New Zealand);
Marta Disegna (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, School of Economics and Management, Italy.);
Riccardo Massari (Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali ed Economiche, La Sapienza, Roma, Italy) |
| Abstract: |
Market segmentation offers several strategic and tactical advantages to
marketers. Hierarchical and non-hierarchical segmentation methods have several
weaknesses but remain widely applied in tourism studies. Alternative
segmentation methods such as fuzzy, mixture models, and Bagged Clustering are
relatively less popular. In this study, we propose a novel method, the Bagged
Fuzzy C–Means (BFCM) algorithm, for segmenting tourism markets. A sample of
328 Chinese travellers revealed the existence of four segments (Admirers,
Enthusiasts, Moderates, and Apathetics) of perceived images for Western
Europe. BFCM is able to identify stable clusters, inheriting this feature from
Bagged clustering method. Furthermore, fuzzy allocation allows to idetify
travellers whose profiles match with more than one cluster. Destination
marketers need to proactively manage the image of Western Europe to attract
the increasingly discerning Chinese traveller. Information provision and
on-line presence strategies will be critical for destination success. |
| Keywords: |
Bagged Clustering; Fuzzy C–means; Chinese travellers; Tourism market segmentation; Western Europe; Likert–type scales; fuzzy coding. |
| JEL: |
C02 C81 D12 L83 |
| Date: |
2013–10 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bzn:wpaper:bemps13&r=tur |