ON THE PERCEIVED USEFULNESS OF SCALING TECHNIQUES IN MARKET ANALYSIS

This study examines the perceived usefulness of alternative spatial an d tree-based similarity scaling techniques in a market analysis task. These techniques are typically evaluated on their ability to fit or ex plain customer input data. The psychological reaction of individuals w ho use these techniques to analyze markets has been largely ignored. T he study reveals that spatial representations are perceived as more us eful than tree-based clustering techniques, even though the latter pro vide a better fit to customer perceptions. The results have implicatio ns for both the use and development of scaling techniques in psycholog y and marketing. (C) 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.