• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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• v.13
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• pp.209-229
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• 2004

Although the site evaluation factors that affect the navigation pattern are well documented, the attempt to explore the difference in the relationship between navigation pattern and site evaluation factors by post hoc segmentation approach has been relatively rare. For this purpose, this study constructs the structure equation model using web-evaluation data and log file of a community site with 300,000 members. And then it applies the structure equation model to each segment. Each segment is identified by mixture model. Mixture model is to unmix the sample, to identify the segments, and to estimate the parameters of the density function underlying the observed data within each segment. The study examines the opportunity to increase GFI, using mixture model which supposes heterogeneous groups in the users, not through specification search by modification index from structure equation model. This study finds out that AGFI increases from 0.819 at total sample to 0.927, 0.930, 0.928, 0.929 for each 4 segments in the case of the community site. The results confirm that segment level approach is more effective than model modification when model is robust in terms of theoretical background. Furthermore, we can identify a heterogeneous navigation pattern and site evaluation variation in the community website at segment level.