Segmenting visitors of cultural events by motivation: A sequential non-linear clustering analysis of Italian Christmas Market visitors

Authors:
Juan Gabriel Brida;Marta Disegna;Linda Osti
Affiliations:
School of Economics and Management, Free University of Bolzano, Piazza dell'Universití, 39100 Bolzano (BZ), Italy;School of Economics and Management, Free University of Bolzano, Piazza dell'Universití, 39100 Bolzano (BZ), Italy;School of Economics and Management, Free University of Bolzano, Piazza dell'Universití, 39100 Bolzano (BZ), Italy
Venue:
Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
Year:
2012

Citing 10
Cited 3

Silhouettes: a graphical aid to the interpretation and validation of cluster analysis

Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics
Self-organization and associative memory: 3rd edition

Self-organization and associative memory: 3rd edition
Integration of self-organizing feature map and K-means algorithm for market segmentation

Computers and Operations Research
Computational cluster validation in post-genomic data analysis

Bioinformatics
Data Mining with Combined Use of Optimization Techniques and Self-Organizing Maps for Improving Risk Grouping Rules: Application to Prostate Cancer Patients

Journal of Management Information Systems
Using SOM and PCA for analysing and interpreting data from a P-removal SBR

Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence
Shades of green: A psychographic segmentation of the green consumer in Kuwait using self-organizing maps

Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
Clustering the ecological footprint of nations using Kohonen's self-organizing maps

Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
A Cluster Separation Measure

IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
Clustering of the self-organizing map

IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks

Visitors of two types of museums: A segmentation study

Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
Bagged Clustering and its application to tourism market segmentation

Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal
A medical procedure-based patient grouping method for an emergency department

Applied Soft Computing

Quantified Score

Hi-index	12.05

Visualization

Abstract

Considering the importance of market segmentation as a marketing tool to determine promotional policies, this paper aims to contribute to the tourism literature using the two-level approach proposed by Vesanto and Alhoniemi (2000) as an alternative and effective method to conduct cluster analyses. For this purpose, an empirical study was conducted interviewing tourists who visited three different Christmas Markets in Northern Italy. The two-level approach is based on two clustering techniques used in sequence: a Self-Organizing Map (SOM) followed by a clustering algorithm. The Silhouette index (Rousseeuw, 1987) is used as a guideline during the second level in the selection process of both the best clustering techniques (between hierarchical and non-hierarchical) and the best partition. The analysis identified three cluster segments and this paper demonstrates the suitability of the clustering method adopted. In the discussion of the results, marketing and managerial implications are also highlighted.