The Meeting Selection Process: a Demographic Profile of Attendees Clustered By Criteria Utilized in Selecting Meetings

The objectives of this study were to develop homogeneous groups of meeting or conference attendees based on criteria used to select a meeting and to profile these groups based on their demographic profile. A factor analysis was performed on meeting selection criteria items to determine underlying dimensions. Four factors surfaced: education, leadership, networking and destination attributelrecreationl social. A surrogate variable from each factor was selected to represent the factor in a cluster analysis. Three homogeneous groups emerged from an agglomerative hierarchical clustering procedure. Crosstabulation analysis with demographic vari ables was used to profile the clusters. It was concluded that each homogeneous group of respondents had a distinct demographic profile. The results of the study provided implications for both the attendee and the meeting planner. Meeting planners can provide a more effective meeting if they are aware of what theirtargeted audience finds important.