Harris Goldstein is president and founder of Trade-Off Marketing Services, Inc. He has been an executive with Columbia Pictures, Times Mirror Satellite Programming, Young & Rubicam, and Market Facts, Inc.

Dr. Peter Zandan is president of IntelliQuest, Inc., a full-service marketing intelligence, research, and consulting firm based in Austin , Texas . He received his M.B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

You’ve surveyed the universe. The data has been cross-tabbed. You wade through the numbers. Results are clear to you. Opportunities emerge from the facts and figures. Now all you have to do is translate your findings to the boss. You can only get five minutes of her time . . .

A picture is still worth a thousand words

Brand images are invisible to the untrained eye. But they are there. You just need the right device to make them visible. Perceptual mapping is the method that produces a meaningful picture of how your brand measures up to the competition in the eyes of the marketplace.

Perceptual mapping has been used in applied marketing research for about 25 years. Maps have been effectively used for consumer and industrial product positioning and corporate and institutional image research. Methodologies for making maps vary, with each having strengths and weaknesses. Yet, most provide four key benefits:

  1. They illustrate how competitive products/brands are perceived with respect to their strengths, weaknesses, and similarities.
  2. They demonstrate the strength of existing images.
  3. They serve as a means of assessing new product positioning or the repositioning of existing brands.
  4. They allow you to measure the effectiveness of your communication and advertising messages.

Perceptual maps are derived from customers rating how competitive brands are perceived as having certain characteristics. For example, we can have computer users describe their perceptions of software products being low in price, being easy to use, being state-of-the-art and/or having strong support. This attitudinal information is synthesized, summarized and mapped out. The end result is an explicit picture that shows comparisons and contrasts among competitive brands.

Reading maps

The maps are relatively easy to read with a minimum amount of orientation. The horizontal and vertical axes are the primary dimensions of a perceptual map. These two boundaries often account for a majority of the ways consumers differentiate and discriminate between brands.

For example, the software products mapped in Figure A are compared and contrasted according to the relative strength of their features (vertical axis) and according to their relative stature as reputable industry standards (horizontal axis). The map is composed of four quadrants. Each quadrant is defined by its boundary axes. In this example, the lower left quadrant exemplifies a weak position except on price. The brands in this quadrant are perceived to be the antitheses of the upper right hand quadrant; expensive but strong on features and reputation.

In perceptual mapping, the further a brand is located from the center, in the direction of a specific arrow, the more it is perceived as embodying that specific quality. Brands that are perceived as similar are located close together while those that are perceived as different are farther apart. Brands with vague, undifferentiated images tend to lie near the center of the map. Attributes which are closely related have nearly parallel arrows, while those that are unrelated to one another are at right angles.

Because perceptual mapping measures respondents’ preferences of one brand over another, a statistical measurement (squared distances) provides a share of preference measurement (see Figure 2). Computer-aided simulations of estimated share preference for any brand, versus its competitors, identifies the aspects of the brand’s image that, when enhanced or emphasized, will most effectively increase the share of preference (see Table 1).

All-in-One currently holds an estimated 3% share of preference. To most effectively increase its competitive position, All-in-One should enhance its reputation in the areas of “ease of use” and “performance/speed.”

The ability to “manage” the perceptions of the marketplace is a key component to successful marketing. The challenge for the research professional is to communicate the complex information that comprises brand image so that management can make informed decisions.

Perceptual maps can provide the answer.