Market Segmentation using Bagged Fuzzy C–Means (BFCM): Destination Image of Western Europe among Chinese Travellers

Pierpaolo D'Urso, Girish Prayag (), Marta Disegna () and Riccardo Massari ()
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Girish Prayag: Department of Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Riccardo Massari: Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali ed Economiche, La Sapienza, Roma, Italy

No BEMPS13, BEMPS - Bozen Economics & Management Paper Series from Faculty of Economics and Management at the Free University of Bozen

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. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C02 C81 D12 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2013-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-tur
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