Hello Walt

 

To my knowledge, you would need to run utilities for each individual
using HB estimation or to run utilities for each segment group using
latent class estimation.  Whilst I have never done this in R, my
understanding is that the relevant packages exist.  For example, you
could use the bayesm package to estimate HB scores for each individual
and then use a clustering method such as k-means to segment these
individual utility scores.  

 

The alternative way of thinking is to simultaneously identify segments
and utility scores for those segments directly from the choices that
individuals make, using latent class segmentation (e.g.
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/47171).  I understand that
this method is what the Sawtooth latent class package is built upon,
however I do not know if the relevent package exist to do this in R.  I
would be very interested to know if you find out!

 

Finally, if you do decide to segment directly from HB utilities, I would
recommend reading the Sawtooth thinking about removing the scale factor
from raw conjoint utilities before doing any clustering on them.
http://www.sawtoothsoftware.com/forum.php?cmd=show&thread=260&posts=4.
In this post Bryan Orme at Sawtooth recommends using Latent Class to
develop segments, rather than clustering directly on individual-level
utility scores.

 

Best regards

Tim

 

 

Timothy Johnson | Marketing Sciences | Harris Interactive
+44 (0)208 263 5271 | tjohnson@harrisinteractive.com
<mailto:tjohnson@harrisinteractive.com> 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Data Analytics Corp. [mailto:walt@dataanalyticscorp.com] 
Sent: 31 January 2011 19:53
To: r-sig-dcm@r-project.org
Subject: [R-sig-DCM] segmenting consumers after a dcm

 

Hi,

 

I just completed a dcm (not a conjoint) for a client.  Now they would
like to segment the consumers based on utilities from the model,
claiming that they had this done for them before although they don't
know what or how it was done.  My model had coefficients estimated
across all consumers, not for each one separately.  I don't even think
that makes sense to do for each individual.  Has anyone ever done
segmentation after a dcm?

 

Thanks,

 

Walt

 

________________________

 

Walter R. Paczkowski, Ph.D.

Data Analytics Corp.

44 Hamilton Lane

Plainsboro, NJ 08536

________________________

(V) 609-936-8999

(F) 609-936-3733

walt@dataanalyticscorp.com

www.dataanalyticscorp.com

 

 

 

 


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