Challenging “Factor–Cluster Segmentation”

Abstract

The concept of market segmentation has been widely accepted and warmly embraced both by tourism industry and academia. In tourism research, this increased interest in segmentation studies has led to the emergence of a standard research approach. Most notably a concept referred to as “factor–cluster segmentation” has been broadly adopted. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that this approach is not generally the best procedure to identify homogeneous groups of individuals (market segments).