TOURISM SEGMENTATION BASED ON TOURISTS PREFERENCES: A MULTIVARIATE APPROACH

• Autor(a) principal: Ferreira, Sérgio Dominique
• Data de Publicação: 2010
• Outros Autores: Maia, Sancha Catarina Frazão, Boubeta, Antonio Rial
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Turismo
• Texto Completo: https://rbtur.org.br/rbtur/article/view/265
• topic: Tourism Marketing. Market segmentation. Consumers preferences. Cluster analysis.; Marketing turístico. Segmentación de mercados. Preferencia de los consumidores. Análisis de cluster.; Marketing Turístico. Segmentação de mercados. Preferências dos consumidores. Cluster Analysis.

Over the last decades, tourism became one of the most important sectors of the international economy. Specifically in Portugal and Brazil, its contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and job creation is quite relevant. In this sense, to follow a strong marketing approach on the management of tourism resources of a country comes to be paramount. Such an approach should be based on innovations which help unveil the preferences of tourists with accuracy, turning it into a competitive advantage. In this context, the main objective of the present study is to illustrate the importance and benefits associated with the use of multivariate methodologies for market segmentation. Another objective of this work is to illustrate on the importance of a post hoc segmentation. In this work, the authors applied a Cluster Analysis, with a hierarchical method followed by an  optimization method. The main results of this study allow the identification of five clusters that are distinguished by assigning special importance to certain tourism attributes at the moment of choosing a specific destination. Thus, the authors present the advantages of post hoc segmentation based on tourists’ preferences, in opposition to an a priori segmentation based on socio-demographic characteristics.