Plantitas/Plantitos Preference Analysis on Succulents Attributes and Its Market Segmentation: Integrating Conjoint Analysis and K-means Clustering for Gardening Marketing Strategy

Many people have switched to gardening as their new hobby during the COVID-19 pandemic, including Filipinos. With its increasing popularity, Filipinos called the new hobbyists “plantitas” and “plantitos” instead of the old-fashioned term “plant people”. Among different plants, succulents are one of the most popular for plant lovers as they can thrive with even minimal care, making them suitable to be an indoor/outdoor plant. This study aims to determine the various preferences of plantitas and plantitos based on succulent attributes using a conjoint analysis approach, and to discover the market segments using a k-means clustering approach. The attributes presented in this study are the types of succulents, succulent variegation, price, size of the succulent (in terms of diameter), size of the pot, pot material, and payment method. The conjoint analysis results indicated that the price was the attribute that significantly affected consumer buying behavior, followed by the diameter size of the succulent. On the other hand, the k-means cluster analysis identified three customer segments based on the buying frequency of customers, namely high-value customers, core-value customers, and lower-value customers. A marketing strategy for succulent sellers was proposed based on these segmentations, particularly on how to gain and attract more customers. This study is one of the first studies that analyzed the preferences related to succulent attributes. Finally, the conjoint analysis approach and k-means clustering in this study can be utilized to analyze succulent preferences worldwide.