earticle

영어

This study suggests by cluster analysis the strategy for cluster categorization and segmentation of 367 SMEs participating in HIT 500, a government support program for online marketing. By conducting Ward analysis, a hierarchical cluster analysis, and K-means analysis, a non-hierarchical cluster analysis, we found out the optimized number of clusters, 3, and for the 3 clusters, we conducted cross tabulation based on not only analysis of descriptive statistics but also analyses of the understanding of online marketing, applicability of online marketing, and improvement of product awareness, thereby suggesting the strategy for segmentation of SMEs for each cluster. As the result of the analysis, it was found that for beginning SMEs, the effect of online marketing support on the firms was large but for grown-up and mature SMEs, the effect of online marketing support was small. This result indicates that the firms in beginning phase are more in need of online marketing support than others, and for grown-up and mature SMEs, packaged support for both on and off-line marketing and support for opportunities to exploit new market are more necessary. The findings of this study would suggest a new direction for online marketing support program of government and it is expected that customized support would lead to the improvement of SMEs in their competitiveness and result in more efficient running of the online marketing support program.