marketing researchers often use city blocks as clusters in cluster sampling. using this fact, explain how a market researcher might use multistage cluster sampling to select a sample of consumers from all cities having a population of more than 10,000 in

2 hours ago 3
Nature

A market researcher might use multistage cluster sampling to select a sample of consumers from all cities with populations over 10,000 by following these steps:

  1. First, from the population of all cities with more than 10,000 residents, the researcher randomly selects a sample of cities. This is the first stage of clustering.
  2. Within each selected city, the researcher then divides the city into smaller clusters such as city blocks, since city blocks are commonly used as clusters in marketing research.
  3. The researcher randomly selects several city blocks within each chosen city. This is the second stage of clustering.
  4. Finally, within each selected city block, the researcher either surveys all households or randomly selects individual consumers to participate in the study. This is the last stage and gives the final sample of consumers.

This multistage cluster approach narrows down a large, geographically dispersed population into manageable clusters, making data collection practical while maintaining representativeness across different cities and neighborhoods.