Perceptual mapping group C

BY

Gaurav Gupta (14075)

Perceptual Mapping is a graphics technique used by asset marketers that attempts to visually display the perceptions of customers or potential customers. Typically the position of a product, product line, brand, or company is displayed relative to their competition.

Perceptual Mapping involves following steps :

1. Determine which characteristics of the product are consumer hot buttons

It is a function of market, so the characteristics that consumers use to determine which car to buy are entirely different from which doctor to use, where the criterion might be reputation (high versus unknown) and location (near versus far). We can’t guess on this stuff, because if you have the wrong criteria, then the rest of our efforts would be wasted.  So it is better to ask from market what is important to it.  A survey or a focus group can be done to find those hot buttons that control consumer behaviour.  Along with these CRM can also be used.

 2. Survey your market

Once consumer hot buttons have been identified, we need to find out how consumers rate our products, as well as how they rate our competitors.  Its also good to get demographics, some geographies , and some psychographic information do see if there might be some segmentation value ie. different segments generate different maps and you can use this to reach the segments better with unique brands.

3. Graph results

Graphs can be obtained using SPSS, Permap or other softwares.  Regardless, of  the software used the map should not only display the position of various brands, but the size of the brand on the map should reflect its market share .

4. Interpret the map

This step is where we get strategic value from the perceptual map.  Here are some things to look for on your perceptual map.

§  Do consumer attitudes toward our brand match what we want them to think about our brand?

§  Do consumer attitudes toward our competitors match what we thought about them?

§  Who are the competitors consumers see as closest to our brand?

§  Are there holes in the perceptual map indicating potential for new brands?

5. Make changes in your marketing strategy

If consumers don’t see our brand in a favorable way, we need to make changes.  If there’s really something wrong with our brand leading to poor consumer attitudes, then we need to fix the brand.   If not, changes are required in  advertising and promotional campaign to help moderate these attitudes.

If consumers view competitors as being very similar to our brand, think of a strategy how to make out brand stand out from the competitor’s.

 EXAMPLE

In the example we have taken relative perceptions of eight people about these brands of softdrink and averaged them to find the matrix given below.

Title=Perceptions of Soft Drinks

nobjects=6

similaritylist

Coke      1.00                                                                       

Pepsi     0.76        1.00                                                       

Maaza   0.41        0.19        1.00                                       

Slice       0.15        0.42        0.78        1.00                       

Dew       0.36        0.50        0.22        0.33        1.00       

Sprite    0.50        0.32        0.41        0.23        0.61        1.00

In the above example Pepsi & coke are considered alike, while Maaza & Slice are considered alike as these are close. while sprite and dew are not considered to be alike/close to each other. At the primary level it can be said that in the above map the criteria is on the basis of taste, color.

But we can define third axis in the Permap to know that whether any other parameter such as parent company of these brands  affect the clustering or not.

Also in Permap we can remove one of the variables temporary to identify the impact of its presence/absence among the variables.