Back to Top

Perceptual Mapping

Perceptual Mapping

One of the most important pieces of data to any asset marketer is the perception of a given audience to a product, service, brand or industry. It gives the perception about customers’ expectations and the service, that the actually provides. There are many ways to gather this data and they are not always effective at conveying exactly how you compare to your competitors in that field. This is where perceptual mapping becomes such a valuable tool.

Why does it need?

Perceptual mapping is valuable for a number of reasons, most notably the fact that it provides integral data about the relation of a product to those of competitors. By showing how products, services or brand compared to the competitor alternatives in a visual format, this form of analysis is useful in developing the right marketing strategy for your specific niche, as well as a strong competitive strategy, communication strategy and more.

More importantly, this form of analysis allows you to identify potential gaps in the market in which you can develop new products. Finding unfulfilled needs and consumer desires is a major side effect of perceptual mapping that many of our clients have taken advantage of.

How do we deal with it?

There are a number of ways to map the responses provided by customers and potential customers during surveys and other data collection activities, including:

Judgmental Maps or Consensus Maps: Also called intuitive maps, are created based on the core understanding of an individual of the market. These are valuable in that they can be compared to maps based on more in-depth data and reveal biases in your decision making process.

Preference Regression: We use this to produce ideal vectors within the perceptual mapping model.

Multi–dimensional Scaling: This method allows us to create ideal points and competitor positions with which to better analyze the data.

Positioning: We can create a positioning map of where you stand to best present your company in relation to your competitors.

By using these tools we can better understand exactly what types of responses you want to elicit as well, as represented by your competitors, their responses and the way in which your prospective customers make decisions in the market place.