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Clustering Customer Contact Sequences - Results of a Customer Survey in Retailing

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Book cover European Retail Research

Part of the book series: European Retail Research ((ERR))

Abstract

We used a sequence alignment method to cluster customers (N = 132) of a branch of a German consumer electronics retailer according to the sequence of the customers’ contacts with its different marketing channels (e.g. store, homepage, newspaper advertising) during the whole purchase process. In doing so, we obtained three clusters in a short sequences and a long sequences segment. Results reveal differences in the customers’ behaviour concerning the customer contacts and their functions in the whole purchase process, as well as between the identified customer segments. Customer segmentation based upon demographic or psychographic variables would not have been able to enrich knowledge of the customers in this manner.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Marketing and Retailing, Department of Business Administration, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Sascha Steinmann

  2. Institute of Marketing and Retailing, Department of Business Administration, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

    Günter Silberer

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  1. Sascha Steinmann
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  2. Günter Silberer
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Peter Schnedlitz Dirk Morschett Thomas Rudolph Hanna Schramm-Klein Bernhard Swoboda

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© 2010 Gabler Verlag | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH

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Steinmann, S., Silberer, G. (2010). Clustering Customer Contact Sequences - Results of a Customer Survey in Retailing. In: Schnedlitz, P., Morschett, D., Rudolph, T., Schramm-Klein, H., Swoboda, B. (eds) European Retail Research. European Retail Research. Gabler Verlag, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-8349-8938-3_5

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