Title: Cluster analysis for user segmentation in e-government service domain

Authors: Leo Iaquinta; Maria Alessandra Torsello

Addresses: Department of Informatics, Systems and Communication University of Milano-Bicocca Viale Sarca, 336 - 20126 Milano, Italy ' Department of Informatics, Systems and Communication, University of Milano-Bicocca, Viale Sarca, 336 – 20126 Milano, Italy

Abstract: E-government (e-Gov) is becoming more attentive towards providing personalised services to citizens so that they can benefit from better services with less time and effort. To develop user-centred services, a crucial activity is represented by user segmentation that consists in mining needs and preferences of users by identifying homogeneous groups of users, also known as user segments, sharing similar characteristics. This work provides a comprehensive analysis of studies focusing on user segmentation. Moreover, it proposes an approach based on cluster analysis for deriving and characterising segments of users experiencing services in the e-Gov domain. Examples of application of the proposed approach on two real-world case studies are described in order to show its suitability in deriving useful user segments.

Keywords: cluster analysis; user segmentation; partitional around medoid clustering; segment profiles; survey study; e-Gov service domain.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICT.2017.086834

International Journal of Information and Communication Technology, 2017 Vol.11 No.3, pp.412 - 432

Received: 04 Aug 2014
Accepted: 12 Feb 2015
Published online: 29 Sep 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article