Market segmentation in tourism destination sector using self-organizing maps and its validation with structural equation modeling / Segmentação de mercado no setor de destino turístico usando mapas auto-organizados e sua validação com modelagem de equações estruturais

Abstract

Nowadays, the tourism industry is growing up and competing relatively high, so how to make marketing strategies has been an essential issue for your market. A common problem for marketing strategists is how to appropriately segment the market and select segment-specific marketing strategies. Current segmentation methodologies and clustering techniques have evolved to include the use of artificial neural networks to the segmentation of markets. This article presents an approach that combines the Self-Organizing Map of Kohonen (SOM) with the technique Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in the application of a segmentation issue. A satisfaction model is used with SEM to measure customers' habits and attitudes, in Brazilian tourist destination also looking at the effects of moderating segments. These market maps not only help the managers to see fully visualized clusters of market but also reveal mutual correlations between different customers’ characteristic variables. SOM algorithm and visualizing technique were implemented in MATLAB environment to produce market maps of data set.