Abstract:

Traditionally, classificatory economic research has adopted two main approaches: - Heuristic, which is based on the assumptions, the knowledge and the intuition of experts, and; -Mathematical, which is based on formalised models, usually of a statistical nature. In order to achieve more accurate results, it would seem appropriate to combine these two approaches, when developing quantitative indicators and parameters for different markets. The relative importance of the market parameters would be based on "weighting" factors which would be established with the help of experts' estimates. The net result would be to achieve a series of common quantitative measures for the purposes of data comparison. In other words, the authors believe that there is considerable advantage to be derived from blending the benefits of human judgements with the positive aspects of formal mathematical models. It is suggested that much of this advantage has been realised in the method developed - which is discussed below. This method has been used to classify data for a number of regional markets.