Multidimensional scaling (MDS), also called perceptual mapping, is based on the comparison of objects (persons, products, companies, services, ideas, etc.). The purpose of MDS is to identify the relationships between objects and to represent them in geometrical form. MDS is a set of procedures that allows the researcher to map distances between objects in a multidimensional space into a lower-dimensional space in order to show how the objects are related.
MDS was introduced by Torgerson (1952). It has its origins in psychology where it was used to understand respondents’ opinions on similarities or dissimilarities between objects. MDS is also used in marketing, management, finance, sociology, information science, political science, physics, biology, ecology, etc. For example, it can be used to understand the perceptions of respondents, to identify unrecognized dimensions, for segmentation analysis, to position different brands, to position companies, and so on (for descriptions of...
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References and Further Reading
Borg I, Groenen PJF (2005) Modern multidimensional scaling: theory and applications. Springer Series in Statistics. 2nd edn. Springer, New York
Cox TF, Cox AA (2001) Multidimensional scaling, 2nd edn. Chapman and Hall/CRC, Boca Raton
Hair JF, Black WC, Babin BJ, Anderson RE (2010) Multivariate data analysis: a global perspective, 7th edn. Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River
Kruskal JB, Wish M (1978) Multidimensional scaling. SAGE University Paper Series: Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences. SAGE, Newbury Park
Torgerson WS (1952) Multidimensional scaling: I. Theory and method. Psychometrika, 17(4):401–419
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Živadinović, N.K. (2011). Multidimensional Scaling: An Introduction. In: Lovric, M. (eds) International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04898-2_386
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