Abstract
Using the fuzzy sets theory this study shows how customer subjective preferences for preselected products and their subjective evaluations of attributes can be used to generate market clusters. The findings indicate that if the preferences are quantitatively expressed and treated as membership functions of some fuzzy sets then it is possible to construct purely "objective" (non-dominated) evaluations of the products and the attributes. The evaluations can be combined to form profiles which are then grouped as clusters, depending on what linkage criterion is used (single, complete, average). The considerations are illustrated by a numerical example of a car market represented by four car brands (Ford, Mercedes, Holden, and Toyota) and five types of driver (car buff, young person, wealthy physician, rally enthusiast and amateur racer).
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Plocinski, J. (2015). Constructing Fuzzy Clusters for Marketing Research. In: Grant, K., Walker, I. (eds) Proceedings of the 1995 World Marketing Congress. Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17311-5_52
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17311-5_52
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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