Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Details

This article was originally published as: Dolnicar, S, Data-driven Market Segmentation in Tourism – Approaches, Changes Over Two Decades and Development Potential, CD Proceedings of the 15th International Research Conference of the Council for Australian University Tourism and Hospitality Education (CAUTHE), Australia.

Abstract

Market segmentation studies have become very common in tourism research. While the majority of studies follow an a priori segmentation approach by profiling certain subgroups of the tourism market that are defined in advance, the popularity of post-hoc, a posteriori or data-driven segmentation approaches has increased dramatically since its introduction into tourism research in the early Eighties. This paper aims at reviewing data-driven segmentation studies conducted in tourism research with respect to the constructs under study and the methodology used, investigating developments over the past 24 years since the introduction of data-driven segmentation into tourism and providing an outlook on directions of further development.