Competitive Analysis and Perception Mapping
When identifying your own business, you may want to see whether you are in the middle of the crowd with multiple competitors or you are differentiating yourself enough to be away from the crowd.
Based on where you are, you can then applying multiple business strategies to achieve the effect.
In perception mapping, you can map where you currently are and pin point where you want to be in the future.
What is a Perceptual Map?
A perceptual map is a visual representation of the perceptions of customers or potential customers about specific attributes of an organization, brand, product, service, or idea.
This diagrammatic technique (perceptual mapping) asks participants to place products relative to one another along 2 or more axis.
The resulting map shows how consumers see the strengths of competing products in a particular market.
Perception Maps allow you to communicate information in a summative way.
- A good way to help show the relative positions is to use a central brand as the mid point of the axis.
- Individual positioning of each idea allows you to see where there might be differences in perceived opinions.
- This is a great activity to be used by both potential or current customers so that you are capturing their perspectives of your brand.
- You can add additional action items if you want to "find your place" in the market and to talk about strategies that might be used to help change the shifts in perception.
Perceptual maps are also referred to as position maps and market maps. Examples include:
- Quality vs Price
- Functionality vs Price
- Healthiness vs Tastiness
- Price vs Performance
- Price vs Safety & Reliability
- A good way to help show the relative positions is to use a central brand as the mid point of the axis.
- Individual positioning of each idea allows you to see where there might be differences in perceived opinions.
- This is a great activity to be used by both potential or current customers so that you are capturing their perspectives of your brand.
- You can add additional action items if you want to "find your place" in the market and to talk about strategies that might be used to help change the shifts in perception.
Why Create a Perceptual Map?
Understanding what your customers think about you and your competitors is crucial to your success. A perceptual map helps organizations to:
- Understand the thoughts and behaviors of consumers.
- Gain insight into their competition.
- Track market trends.
- Identify gaps in the market.
Use it for:
- Environmental scanning prior to planning.
- Developing marketing, branding, and positioning strategies.
- Informing product and service development initiatives.
- Tracking the performance of new products.
- Identifying the extent of damage to products on the decline.
- Regular reviews to determine market changes and new trends.
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