Lab 4: Analyzing the Segment Model

  • Article

When you analyze segments, you work with two elements: segments and segment groups.

  • Segments are clusters of users that exhibit similar behavior on your Web site or have similar properties, such as age and gender. A segment consists of a summary of the database records that belong to a group of users who share similar profile properties. The summary is derived from properties in the Data Warehouse used to cluster the database records.
  • Segment groups are collections of similar segments or other segment groups.

The segment groups form a hierarchy from which you can analyze trends and discover correlations within the data at different levels of the segment hierarchy. By grouping users according to their similarities, new correlations may become apparent to you. These newly recognized correlations could form the basis for targeting and personalization rules.

To analyze the Segment model

  1. Start the Predictor Demo Business Desk.

  2. In Analysis, click Segment Viewer.

  3. In the Segment Viewer screen, select Software Segments, and then click Open.

  4. In the Segment Viewer: Software Segments screen, note the following:

    Software Segments Model

    • The segment hierarchy in the navigation box represents the entire population. (100 percent). The Segment hierarchy consists of segments and segment groups. A segment is a collection of users with similar property values, for example, users who have made similar purchases. A segment group is a set of similar segments.
    • The Summary of Population box displays a list of the most likely properties and their values in the entire population. The longer the red bar, the more likely the Property/Value pair is in the population.

  5. In the Segment hierarchy pane, expand Population (100%), expand all the segments and segment groups, and then note the following:

    Segment 5

    • The summary of Segment 5 displays the most likely property/value pairs associated with users in this segment. In this example, Money 2000 Business & Personal.QTY with the value 3 indicates that most users in this segment purchased 3 copies of Microsoft Money 2000 Business and Personal.
    • You can compare segments: The Compare Segment 5 to dropdown box has Population selected by default. However, you can select any segment or segment group for a comparison between the selected segment and rest of the segments present in the segment model.
    • Yellow bars indicate the property/value pairs that increase the membership a user in cluster 5. In this example, Baseball 2000.QTY with value of 1 means a user who purchased a copy of Microsoft Baseball 2000 becomes a member of segment 5.
    • Blue bars indicate the property/value pairs that decreases the membership of a user from segment 5. In this example, Windows 98 Second Edition.QTY with a value of 2 means a user who bought two copies of Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition is less likely to be a member of segment 5.
    • Purchases of Baseball 2000 and Microsoft NBA Inside Drive 2000 place a user in segment 5. This implies that the users in cluster 5 are sports computer games fans compared to the rest of the segments in the total population.
    • You can rename segments to make the names meaningful and easier to browse.

  6. In Segment hierarchy, select Segment 5, and then click Rename.

  7. In the Rename Segment dialog box, in the Rename to box, type Sports Computer Games Fans, and then click OK.

  8. In Segment hierarchy, select Segment 7, and then note the following:

    • Users in the cluster 7 purchased Site Server 3.0, Commerce Edition and SQL Server 7. This implies that the users in cluster 7 are Web Developers.

  9. In Segment hierarchy, select Segment 7, and then click Rename.

  10. In the Rename Segment dialog box, in the Rename to box, type Web Developers, and then click OK.

  11. In Segment hierarchy, select Segment Group 14, and then note the following:

    • The Comparing Segments section provides summary and other comparison information for segments as well as segment groups.
    • You should view all the segments and segment groups within a model to get a better understanding of the segment model.

  12. Analyze all segments in Segment Group 14 to deduce that it represents home users.

  13. Rename Segment Group 14 to Home Users.

  14. In the Segment hierarchy pane, select Segment Group 12, and then note that the group represents small business users.

  15. Rename Segment Group 12 to Small Business Users.

  16. In the Segment hierarchy pane select Segment 3, and then note that the group represents developers.

  17. Rename Segment 3 to Developers.

    Segment Viewer

  18. In the Segment Viewer: Software Segments screen, click Report on the toolbar to view the summary report of the entire Segment model.

    • You can save this report to a file by saving the Model Summary Web page from your Internet browser.
    • You can also export user lists. User lists are used by Commerce Server 2002 to create a direct mail campaign to target users who are likely to buy a specific product.

  19. In the Segment hierarchy section, select Web Developers, and then click Export on the toolbar.

  20. In the Export Segment to List dialog box, do the following:

    Use this To do this
    Enter list name Type Web Developers.
    Minimum probability Verify that the value is 0.50.

    In Commerce Server 2002, every user is a partial member of all the segments. Segments tend to overlap with less distinct boundaries. So, a user may be 80% member of one group and a fractional member of the rest. The higher the fractional value assigned to the user, the closer the property values of the user are to the property values of the typical user in the segment. This fractional value of a user is the probability of membership for the given segment.

    The Minimum probability sets a threshold criterion for including a user in the export list. If the probability of membership of a user exceeds the specified threshold, the user is not included in the export list.

    If the Minimum probability is set to be high (close to 1), then only a small number of users will be included in the user list. However, if the value is set to be low (close to 0), then many users will be included in the export list.

  21. Click OK.

Copyright © 2005 Microsoft Corporation.
All rights reserved.