More mailbag...Saturday

Got this email:

Dear Professor,
I have read on your blog about a clarification on cluster analysis for Q.7 and Q.21. These questions are about Car Attributes and their importance.

We have approached the project from a different direction and have done factor and cluster analysis on psychographic and demographic variables. We have found clusters using these variables and are trying to characterize these clusters in terms of the importance they attach to car attributes and other variables.

Does our approach make sense ? And is there any significant advantage of starting with the factor and cluster analysis of car attributes ?

Sincere thanks for constantly willing to help the students in this project.

Thanks and Best Regards,
S

My response:

Hi S,

IMO, its OK to take either approach, provided you have good reason to do so.

In your approach, you are segmenting the target popn along psychographics and demographics whereas in what was proposed by me, you would segment the target popn primarily along car attribute preferences.

While certainly there would be some overlap between the 2 sets of segments/clusters resulting from the 2 approaches, the logic underlying the approaches is quite different, IMHO.

Hope that clarifies.

Sudhir