Hybrid clustering based on multi-criteria segmentation for higher education marketing

Abstract

Market segmentation in higher education institutions is still rarely applied although it can assist in defining the right strategies and actions for the targeted market. The problem that often arises in market segmentation is how to exploit the preferences of students as customers. To overcome this, the combination of hybrid clustering method with multiple criteria will be applied to the case of the market segmentation for students in higher education institutions. The integration of geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral criteria from students is used to get more insightful information about student preference. Data result of the integration will be processed using hybrid clustering using K-means and self organizing map (SOM) algorithm. The hybrid clustering conducted to get promising clustering result along with the visualization of segmentation. This study successfully produces five student segments. It received 1,386 as the Davies-Bouldin index (DBI) value and 2,752 as the quantization error (QE) value which indicates a good clustering result for market segmentation. In addition, the visualization of the clustering result can be seen in a hexagonal map.