Assessment of clusteranalysis and self-organizing maps

Market segmentation represents a central problem of preparing marketing activities. The methodical approach of this problem is supported by clustering methods. Available data are used to detect common grounds regarding their quality structures. Therefore statistics provides various methods for cluster analysis. Self-organizing maps are another possibility to form classes. They are a special approach of the artificial neural networks. The statistical methods and these methods, which are based on organic processes of our brain, offer different solutions although the starting conditions are the same. Often decisions about investigations are based on such solutions. Therefore the results of clustering are very important to reveal systematic information about the size of classes and their structure. Methodical notes are needed for the use of any clustering method. This paper offers a simplified way to select the best result for clustering.