Day 5 - Team H

Perceptual Maps and Marketing strategy

Perceptual map helps a marketer to map the perceptual position of any brand w.r.t competitors, based on defined parameters.

Let us consider an automobile company which have developed two dimensions for creating perceptual map for its customers, the dimensions being:

·         sporty versus conservative,

·         Practical/affordable versus classy/distinctive

Then the perceptual maps will show the position of all the automobile brands w.r.t the above dimensions. The below figure shows how the perceptual map will look like:

Fig. Perceptual map for automobile companies

As shown in the above figure the position taken by Porsche is opposite to that of Plymouth, now if the marketing strategy of Plymouth doesn’t want to place Plymouth in that position then the marketing team needs to work on the strategy to correct its position.

Steps to build perceptual maps

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

2.       Survey your market

3.       Prepare distance matrix based on the collected data

4.       Graph results

The graphed result can be is the perceptual map, a marketer can address following questions

·         What attributes does the brand own? What attributes do competitors own?

·         Are there gaps in the market that may be filled by the client brand?

·         How should the brand be positioned to be both relevant to the market and differentiated from the competition?

Fig. perceptual map

Perceptual maps have a large number of applications, and gives immense insight to a marketer. 

Author-

Nishant Lal