The Study of Customer Segmentation Examined by Catastrophe Model

Abstract

Convenience stores in Taiwan have made remarkable successes with retail delivery services by integrating E-commerce and logistics systems to form a new retail delivery model: “On-line shopping with pick-ups at convenience stores.” Although choice behavior has been discussed in marketing, few studies describe the non-linear characteristic of choice behavior. The catastrophe model was used to analyze the linkages between customer satisfaction and switching cost on pick-up point service loyalty. The results indicated that the switching cost plays the splitting factor in the catastrophe model, and a high switching cost makes the discontinuous choice behavior. In the cusp catastrophe mode, “Reselection electronic map” is the main index of the splitting factor. Nevertheless, “The quality of relative service concerning the electronic map” is the main index of the normal factor. It has been expected that a catastrophe approach to discontinuous behavior has made clearly abundant implications. Based on the findings of loyalty in the application of cusp catastrophe theory, the cusp catastrophe model is an appropriate model to know the process of loyalty. It suggests that other researchers could consider the cusp catastrophe theory and other nonlinear techniques, especially for standard approaches not adequately to capture the underlying dynamic.