Development of demographic classification model within geomarketing and a case study in Eskisehir

In today's market place, businesses are required to continually stay innovative and insightful in a bid to remain competitive. However, to remain competitive, it is necessary for organisations to be "customer focused". Hence, sufficient knowledge of a target market as well as their geographic distribution and also, understanding the anticipated value of each customer, referred to as applying a geodemographic segmentation, will offer a great opportunity for businesses to grow in market size and increase in profits, within a given neighbourhood. Furthermore, the growth of marketing opportunities as a result of adopting geomarketing, which makes use of derived target geodemographic segments, offers a prospect for innovative product design and appropriately matched consumer pricing. As a consequence, this study explores the derivation of geodemographic segmentations for locations in urban and rural neighbourhoods, within the province of Eskişehir. This study also attempts to define and determine household characteristics for people living in Eskişehir. Target geodemographic segments derived from conducting a principal component analysis and also, executing a hierarchical clustering from using SPSS software, was mapped in GIS platform and offers a visual geodemographic representation for both urban and rural neighbourhoods, across Eskişehir. This study, which provides a geodemographic classification for Eskişehir, in general terms, offers a template for a more detailed study into geodemography to be conducted in the not too distant future.