Designing an Ethical Targeted Marketing Model by Identifying Factors Affecting Customer Clustering

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of customer clustering in the design of an ethical and targeted marketing model in Internet of Things (IOT) Technology Services Companies.

The research method is applied, exploratory and mixed (qualitative-quantitative). Qualitative section: 15 people of sales and marketing managers of IOT companies, were selected for in-depth interviews by targeted and snowballs methods. In this phase used entropy and VIKOR decision-making techniques. The software used in this phase was Max QDE. Quantitative section: In this phase, all the customers of the studied companies were included, and due to the unlimited nature of the society with Morgan's table, 384 people were selected as the sample size by non-random and available methods. The data collection tool in this section was questionnaire, which used Cronbach's alpha to examine the validity of the questionnaire. In order to analyze the data, the exploratory factor analysis method and Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with Smart-PLS2 and Liserl software were used.

Qualitative section: In this phase, four clusters were identified: communication factors, ethical and behavioral factors, individual factors and economic factorsQuantitative section: In this phase, the model obtained in the first phase was quantitatively examined and validated and approved.

The results showed that four main clusters: communication factors, ethical and behavioral factors, individual factors and economic factors are dimensions of targeted marketing and customers are classified according to their characteristics. So, these companies should pay attention to these items as methods for sales promotion.