A bio-mimetic approach to marketing segmentation: Principles and comparative analysis

– A regression algorithm is proposed for partitioning a population into clusters characterised by homogeneous models and predictions. This algorithm, Typren, is based on the hybridisation of a genetic algorithm with linear regression. An empirical illustration is provided, using real marketing data, which compares Typren with the fuzzy clustering approach, Glimmix, based on a regression mixture model. Typren provides better predictivity and better within-cluster homogeneity of predictions. However, the results are slightly less robust compared to Glimmix.