Cluster analysis application in cognitive processes of transport enterprise stratification

Celem artykułu jest wykazanie użyteczności narzędzia, jakim jest analiza skupień, w procesach porządkowania stratyfikacyjnego przedsiębiorstw transportowych. Analiza ta, pozwalając na wykrycie określonych struktur w przestrzeni rynku transportowego, może stać się punktem wyjścia do dalszych badań nad wyjaśnianiem procesów stratyfikacji podmiotów tego rynku.The research on transport may concern many issues, including the entity structures of the transport market, which is filled with diversified behavior of different entities, both on the supply and on the demand side of the market. On each of the sides one can observe layers of entities characterized by similar behavior – in the stratification systems of the market, individual entities in one layer show a similarity of the behavior, which is different between the layers. The goal of the article is to prove the usefulness of the cluster analysis in the processes of stratification arrangement of the transport enterprises. The analysis, by allowing the detection of particular structures in the transport market may become a starting point to further research on the explanation of stratification processes in that market. A ranking of transport and haulage enterprises, in which they were grouped according to the revenues in the year 2014 was used in the article. The procedure of k-means clustering and a further ANOVA were used to obtain the results which allow to conclude that there are in fact clusters on the market, which are different when it comes to crucial economic data. This leads to a conclusion that the use of presented research methods allows to show the processes on the transport market in a new way, thus proving the practical use of cluster analysis