For the analysis of the dendrogram, we simply divide the distance into an interval of 5, from 5 to 25 in order to conduct the segmentation based on the result. The corresponding segment of each interval is presented below. To simplify the presentation, we assign a stage number to each attributes.
From the segmentation results above, we can see the followings:
When distance is set to 5, there would be totally 5 segments. Quality and Performance would be clustered as segment 1. User-friendliness and Price would be clustered as segment 2. This suggested that customers are interested in these two segments, while the other .....
For VAR00001, we can see that the dominant attributes for this variable are Quality and Performance, while the dominant attributes for VAR00002 are Comfort and Attractiveness. The larger the coefficient of the attribute is, the more the related to the corresponding variable.
Therefore, when analyzing the perceptual map, we can simply use the dominant attributes to explain the result.
From the perceptual map, we can see the followings:
Samsung, Lenovo and Dell can be grouped into a cluster as they all sharing the same properties:Both low Quality and Performance, and Comfort and Attractiveness. This means that they have relatively low competitiveness.
Fujitsu and HP can be grouped into a cluster as they both have low Comfort and Attractiveness while high Quality and Performance. Customer interested in Quality and Performance and have no opinion about Comfort and Attractiveness would have a high preference in these two brand.
Sony is an individual cluster showing both high Quality and Performance, and Comfort and Attractiveness. It has the highest competitiveness since it shows superior performance in VAR00001 and VAR00002.
From the information above, it indicates the opportunity for the product positioning. Since the three clusters showed in the perceptual map positioned in top, left-bottom corner and right-bottom corner, there would be a great opportunity to position a new product in the middle part of the perceptual map which means to have so-so Quality and Performance, and Comfort and Attractiveness.
This would be very attractive to customers who do not desire a high performance in either VAR00001 or VAR00002 while it should not be low. Mediate performance in these two aspects would be .....
For cluster 4, it has high performance in Quality and Performance, while so-so in the other attributes.
Overall Comments
In this laboratory, there were totally 3 methods of cluster presented, including the dendrogram, perceptual map and cluster map. Dendrogram is very useful in determining the suitable number of segments. It is a hierarchical and agglomerative process. By deciding the distant value with all the required factors taken into considerations (such as cost and profit), we can simply draw a vertical or horizontal line in order to determine the number of segments as well as their corresponding attributes.
Perceptual map is derived from a set of data, usually from customer, about the rating of existing products in the market along various attributes. It is the perceptions of similarities between brands and products. Cluster map is a non-hierarchical process. It requires to pre-specify the number of clusters which later assign each observation to a cluster then the distance between each point in that cluster and the mean distance value will be calculated.
Points will be assigned to a cluster in order to obtain a minimum sum of distance between each p.....