Market segmentation by tourists' sentiments

This research outlines valuable market segments entangling tourists' sentiments toward marketing. A criterion-based scheme integrating a Chi-square Automatic Interaction Detection algorithm is utilized to separate the respondents into four mutually exclusive segments. Among the resultant four, two are identified as actionable segments according to the gain index scores stemming from the algorithm procedure. Results from the study indicate that there are significant variations in demographic and trip characteristics among the respondents grouped into actionable segments and those belonging to non-actionable ones. With analyses of two actionable segments, variations in demographic and trip characteristics are also manifested. The study concludes with marketing implications and new research directions.