Market clustering goes graphic: The Weiss trilogy and a proposed extension

In this article, the author reviews three works by the geodemographer Micha el J. Weiss, concluding that his trilogy provides material of considerable value to marketing or consumer researchers concerned with understanding pat terns of consumption or with the formulation of marketing strategy. A parti al reservation involves the difficulty of comprehending the overall structu re of consumption patterns without a type of mapping that goes beyond the m erely geographic to represent taste clusters by means of preference spaces derived by techniques like multidimensional scaling (MDS). The author illus trates such an extension by conducting an MDS analysis of data provided by Weiss in ways that appear to shed light on the power and profundity of the insights he offers. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.