Market Attractiveness Classification of European Union Countries for Establishing Logistics Centres

Abstract

At present, enterprises are forced to serve their customers as quickly as possible if they wantto succeed on turbulent global markets. Enterprises are looking for regions with high-qualityinfrastructure where they can establish new logistics centres that enable enterprises to serve theircustomers quickly. This paper focuses on the segmentation of the European Union market forenterprises that are willing to set up logistics centres in order to be able to distribute productsfluently and more quickly to their customers in Europe. An agglomerative hierarchical clusteringalgorithm was used and Ward’s criterion applied for the purposes of market segmentation.A Logistic Performance Index and the indicator Dealing with Construction Permits were used as tworelevant dimensions reflecting the market attractiveness of identified clusters. Based on the givenstatistical output, fundamental marketing concepts were formulated for each cluster composed ofEU countries with similar characteristics.