Cluster Analysis A cluster analysis was carried out in order to pool candidates who gave similar responses.

The variables chosen for this purpose were: 1) Brand Trust 2) Promotion joining 3) Success rate 4) Experienced faculty members 5) Peer group

Step1 Non-hierarchical analysis The non-hierarchical analysis was conducted with following inputs. Minimum number of clusters-2 Maximum number of clusters-3 Method-Wards method Distance- Squared Euclidean distance The following results were obtained: Case Processing Summarya,b Cases Valid Missing Total N Percent N Percent N Percent 36 100.0 0 .0 36 100.0 a. Squared Euclidean Distance used b. Ward Linkage

The dendrogram gives the distinctness of the clusters and gives the number of clusters. In this case there are three clusters.

Step 2: Two-step cluster analysis

From the Two- step cluster test, it can be verified that the number of clusters is 3. However, the separation among the elements is not very distinct. Therefore the cluster quality is not very good. Step 3: In order to find the cluster centers and the number of elements in each cluster, K-mean cluster test was conducted. In this case the number of clusters was given as input.Following results were obtained:Initial Cluster Centers Cluster 1 2 6.00 5.00 7.00 2.00 7.00 3.00 7.00 2.00 2.00 2.00

Brand_I_Trust Success_rate Exp_Faculty_membe rs Peer_group Promotional_join

3 1.00 5.00 7.00 3.00 4.00

Iteration Historya Change in Cluster Centers Iteration 1 2 3 1 2.081 2.813 2.261 2 .000 .000 .000 a. Convergence achieved due to no or small change in cluster centers. The maximum absolute coordinate change for any center is .000. The current iteration is 2. The minimum distance between initial centers is 6.782.

Brand_I_Trust Success_rate Exp_Faculty_member s Peer_group Promotional_join

Final Cluster Centers Cluster 1 2 7.25 5.22 6.17 3.78 6.54 4.56 5.67 2.29 3.44 2.44

3 2.00 5.67 6.33 4.67 3.33

Number of Cases in each Cluster Cluster 1 24.000 2 9.000 3 3.000 Valid 36.000 Missing .000 This table gives the composition of the clusters. From the table below we can find the constitution of the different clusters.

Cluster Membership Case 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 3 Clusters 1 2 2 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 1 3 1 2 3 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 1 2 2 2 2 Clusters 1 2 2 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 1 2 2 2

No. of members in cluster 3=3 (19, 22, 25) No. of members in cluster 2=15 (2,3,5,6,11,17,24,26,27,28,29,31,34,35,36). This is not in accordance with the result obtained from the hierarchical cluster analysis which is 9. Therefore it can be concluded that the boundaries for cluster 1 and cluster 2 have a considerable overlap.

No. of members in cluster 1=18

Since there is a considerable overlap between clusters 2 &1, their responses cannot be put in a common frame.

However cluster 3 can be considered to be the set of those respondents who do go by the brand name nor do they get lured by promotional offers. Instead they look at the success rate, experienced faculty and the peer group for choosing a coaching institute. On analyzing the trend for cluster 2, it was found that this set of respondents who do not look into any of the attributes like experienced faculty members, success rates etc. Instead they tend to look at the promotional offers given by the institutes. Since there was an overlap with cluster 1, data for some of the respondents did not conform to this trend. Cluster 1 consists of respondents who look into all the aspects of the coaching institute like success rate, experienced faculty, peer group and also look for a brand that could be trusted. This group of respondents is not attracted by the promotional offers.

Cluster 1 2 3

Brand trust Yes No No

Success rate Yes No Yes

Experienced Peer group faculty Yes No Yes Yes No Yes

Promotional Category Offers No Yes No Brand conscious Price sensitive Rational