Market Segmentation Conceptual and Methodological Foundations

Dividing customers into target groups has been a major part of marketing since the late 1950s, and Wedel (U. of Groningen, the Netherlands) and Wagner (U. of Iowa) review the foundations of the concept, then hone in on the finite mixture methodologies that are being found increasingly successful. They do discuss cluster analysis, historically the best known technique for market segmentation, but argue that finite mixture techniques are better because they are model based and allow for segmentation in a framework in which customer behavior is described by an appropriate statistical model that includes a mixture component. They mention no date for the first edition. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR