Testing Segment Stability: Insights from a Rural Tourism Study

ABSTRACT

The majority of earlier segmentation studies have focused on finding segmentation solutions rather than on applying the results to practice, and testing the viability of the results. In this study a unique opportunity is used to test how the segmentation solutions of an earlier rural tourism segmentation study conducted in 2009 represent rural tourist segments in 2011, and how well rural tourists can relate to the segments found in the earlier study by using multiple choice questions. Also, different segmentation methods are compared regarding their accuracy to identify the segments. These results show that the four segments identified in the earlier study continue to exist two years later as respondents are able to relate to the segments quite well. However, segment sizes are crucially different and there is some overlap between segments. Travel motivations measured using binary scale produce more accurate segments than motivations measured using a Likert-type scale.

KEYWORDS:

• Market segmentation
• rural tourism
• cluster analysis
• segment stability
• segmentation criteria

This study is funded by the Council of South-Savo/European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Operational Programme for Eastern Finland.