Introducing Clustering with a Focus in Marketing and Consumer Analysis

Clustering has become an extremely popular methodology for consumer analysis with many business applications. Mainly, when a consumer market needs to be segmented, clustering methodologies are some of the most common ways of doing so nowadays. Clustering, however, is a hugely heterogeneous field in itself with advances and explanations coming from many different disciplines. Clustering has been discussed in debates almost as heated as those about politics or religions, yet still, researchers and professionals agree on the methodology’s usefulness in data analytics. This chapter provides the novice data scientist with a brief introduction and review of the field with links to previous large surveys and reviews for recommended further reading. The clustering contributions in this book focus largely on partitional clustering; hence, this is the type of clustering that will feature more prominently in this chapter. Besides sparking the interest of business and marketing researchers and professionals into this ever evolving methodological field, we aim at inspiring dedicated computer scientists and data analysts to continue to explore the wide application domains coming from business and consumer analytics in which clustering and grouping are making great strides.