ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS - A NEW METHODOLOGY FOR INDUSTRIAL MARKET-SEGMENTATION

Neural networks are a type of artificial intelligence computing that h ave generated considerable interest across many disciplines during the past few years. The authors explore the potential of artificial neura l networks in assisting industrial marketers faced with a segmentation problem by comparing their classification ability with discriminant a nalysis and logistic regression. The neural networks achieve higher hi t ratios on holdout samples than the other methodologies. A marketer i n a business-to-business situation may be able to segment a market mor e accurately, thereby improving efficiency for sales forces and other promotional activities, by using artificial neural networks.