Correspondence Analysis: Graphical Representation of Categorical Data in Marketing Research

Correspondence analysis is an exploratory data analysis technique for the graphical display of contingency tables and multivariate categorical data. Its history can be traced back at least 50 years under a variety of names, but it has received little attention in the marketing literature. Correspondence analysis scales the rows and columns of a rectangular data matrix in corresponding units so that each can be displayed graphically in the same low-dimensional space. The authors present the theory behind the method, illustrate its use and interpretation with an example representing soft drink consumption, and discuss its relationship to other approaches that jointly represent the rows and columns of a rectangular data matrix.