Market Mapping

6 Key excerpts on "Market Mapping"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Market Segmentation

  How to Do It and How to Profit from It

  • Malcolm McDonald(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  map This book refers to those who produce the products or services supplied to a market as ‘suppliers’. ‘Market Mapping’ as defined and developed by the authors has become an increasingly important part of the toolkit for marketers. In addition to providing an informative picture of the distribution and value added chain that exists between final users and suppliers, it can also be used to present your own company’s performance on these routes to market and to illustrate where your sales and marketing resources are allocated. This provides a useful check when evaluating your sales and marketing strategies, especially when looking at predicted changes to the market’s structure and when comparing yourself with your key competitors on where resources are committed. Chapter 11, which looks at Market Mapping in more detail and how to capture the above refinements, follows the conclusion of the segmentation process. This is also a useful stage at which to plot your chosen segments onto the market map. Chapter 12 then takes a look at future Market Mapping and predicting channel transformation. Constructing your market map A ‘ market map ’ defines the distribution and value added chain between final users and suppliers of the products or services included within the scope of your segmentation project as determined in the previous step. This should take into account the various buying mechanisms found in the market, including the part played by ‘influencers’

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  eBook - ePub

  Marketing for Architects and Engineers

  A new approach

  • Brian Richardson(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  5

  Strategic mapping

  In modem deregulated markets, you either attempt to guide your business destiny, or let destiny have its way and learn through the pain. (Martin et al. [29])

  5.1

  What is strategic mapping?

  Physical maps redefine our understanding of physical reality. Mental maps redefine our organization of conceptual reality. They are the way in which we try to impose some order on a world of apparent chaos. These mental maps embody all the hopes, fears and aspirations that colour and shape our mental construct. They identify what we feel is of value and what we think is needed to achieve success.

  Strategic mapping identifies strategic options available to practices and then maps them out over the time period of each scenario plan. The strategic emphasis is on choice and empowerment. It is only when you have both the scenario plan details and the related strategic maps that you can select a preferred scenario plan. You need to have as much information as possible about the long-term view and the stages in between before you can make a choice.

  So why bother to look at strategic options so far in advance of events? The first reason is straightforward, namely to benefit from facing up to possible problems in advance and being able to work on solutions without the pressure of events. The second is more subtle and requires some explanation. Marketers and people involved in marketing suffer more than most business professionals from what is sometimes called the ‘Einstellung effect’ (Luchins [33]). The theory behind the Einstellung effect is that when a person or group of people find a simple solution to a particular problem, they will tend to find a more complicated solution to a similar problem in the future.

  In the case of marketing, this is often apparent in, for example, new market entry problems. A company decides that it wants to make inroads into a new market. It allocates sufficient resources, contacts key decision makers in the target sector and conveys a distinct message to the sectoral infrastructure. Several years later, the company decides to enter a new niche market. This time the problem appears to be more complicated. More resources are required, the apparent problem is more complex, more preliminary market research is needed and everyone is less confident, no matter what the outcome of the previous market entry.

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  eBook - PDF

  Marketing Management

  • Dawn Iacobucci(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 68 In other words, positioning involves all the marketing mix variables. This chapter kicks off the rest of the book. We’ll discuss the concept of positioning in this chapter, and we’ll see the details of the marketing mix activities in the chapters that follow. We begin by discussing the concept of positioning via perceptual maps. We then see the positioning matrix, which will give us a framework in which to understand the marketing mix 4Ps (covered in subsequent chapters) and how they’re interconnected. We close with guidelines for writing a positioning statement. 5-1a Positioning via Perceptual Maps They say a picture is worth a gigabyte of words. Marketers and senior managers like to see graphical depictions of where their brands are and where their competitors are in the minds of their customers. These pictures help us envision how customers think about our brand and give us initial answers to many questions: What are our strengths and weaknesses? What are those of our competitors? Even though we think of certain companies and brands as our competitors, do customers view things the same way? Who do they think are our closest substitutes for the benefits they seek when they’re buying in this product category? Perceptual maps provide these pictures. 2 Figure 5-1 depicts a perceptual map of brands of nice business shoes. Brands depicted as points in the map close together are those perceived as similar (e.g., Ferragamo and Santoni), whereas brands farther apart are seen as more different (e.g., Santoni and Johnston & Murphy).

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  eBook - PDF

  Advertising Campaign Strategy

  A Guide to Marketing Communication Plans

  • Donald Parente, Kirsten Strausbaugh-Hutchinson(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  C H A P T E R 3 Map Out the Situation: Know the Market, Product, and Competition THE MARKET ANALYSIS Today, companies are forced to be smarter with their marketing dollars. Advertisers with finite budgets want potency. Bang for their buck. Traditional, broad-based campaigns that blanket the nation with a single message are becoming rare. Costly and cumbersome are out. And plans that contain more focused appeals and precise blends of traditional national, regional, and local in addition to below-the-line tactics are fast becoming the norm. Economical and nimble are the buzz words to live (and plan) by. However, spending efficiently means planning more effectively. In Chapter 2, we addressed the importance of understanding target demographics and psychographics . But quite often, applying geographics can lend advertisers an even greater “ depth of field ”… or perhaps even narrow the field. A common line used with many variations is “ Think globally, but act like a retailer. ” This approach hinges on pursuing par-ticular markets that might possess more sales potential, often times because of their proximity to a store location. The basic purpose of the market analysis then, is to determine those geographic areas that warrant special attention, either because they are problems or because they are most likely to respond favorably to the company ’ s marketing communication program. Consider the following words of clarification with regard to honing in on audiences: The term market may be used both to indicate a geographic area and as a descriptive term to refer to a population segment, such as a Hispanic market. The words target market usually refer to both a population segment and a geographic area. In some plans, a market analysis would be referred to as a “ geographic analysis. ” That is common and acceptable. We prefer using the word market for our section because it connotes a location where sales take place. 93 Copyright 2015 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved.

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  eBook - PDF

  Marketing (AU), P-eBK

  • Greg Elliott, Sharyn Rundle-Thiele, David Waller, Ingo Bentrott, Siobhan Hatton-Jones, Pete Jeans(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Positioning involves two steps: firstly, determining the position that the company wishes to occupy in the minds of buyers; and secondly, developing a marketing mix to reflect the expectations of the target market segment and which reflects that positioning. This is shown in figure 6.7. Determine positioning for each segment To determine the appropriate positioning for its products, an organisation needs to undertake detailed market research to understand its current position in the minds of its target market segments. As outlined in the chapter on market research, a common technique for determining positioning is called perceptual mapping, which typically produces two-dimensional maps showing how each of the competing brands relate to each other in terms of a range of product characteristics. This, of course, assumes that consumers in the target segment are already familiar with the brand and its competitors and are able to subjectively or objectively compare them on characteristics that they believe to be important. In a familiar product category like toothpaste, consumers will generally have little difficulty in describing how they distinguish between competing brands such as Colgate and Maclean’s in terms of a range of attributes such as fresh breath, cavity protection, pleasant taste and suitability for sensitive gums. Under such conditions, familiar Pdf_Folio:168 168 Marketing brands such as Colgate Total occupy clear and strong positions, which is paradoxically both a strength and a limitation. It represents a strength in that existing consumers are in no doubt about the benefits and features of the product. At the same time, such a strong position is difficult to change in the short term. Conversely, new brands in the market are better able to establish new positions based on new benefits as consumers develop awareness of newly discovered issues (e.g. gingivitis).

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  Strategic Marketing

  An Introduction

  • Tony Proctor(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Computer technology has enabled the ready production of maps which display segmentation data effectively. Depending on the data source, the map(s) can be displayed in varying colours or shading patterns (with almost unlimited possibilities, according to category, such as proportion of potential or actual customers, per capita spending in a particular product or service group, or sales achievement versus potential). Such maps can be produced with the aid of a spreadsheet package such as Lotus 123. Most mapping sources can produce maps on paper, transparency film, or slides and colour transparency overlays are almost always a possibility.

  SEGMENTATION, TARGETING AND PRODUCT POSITIONING

  Having introduced the nature of market segmentation, it is now appropriate to examine how it relates to targeting and product positioning. Marketing executives employ the following steps:

  • • segment the market
  • • target the users
  • • position the products.

  In order to segment a market, characteristics have to be identified which distinguish among customers according to their buying preferences. Profiles of market segments which reflect different combinations of these characteristics then have to be constructed.

  To target the users, the financial appeal of all segments should be assessed and segments which have the greatest appeal should be selected for targeting. The selection cr iteria should take account of the relative financial attractiveness of the segments and the organization’s capability to exploit them.

  In positioning a product, one should aim to match it with that segment of the market where it is most likely to succeed.This involves identifying possible positions for products within each target segment and then producing, adapting and marketing them towards the target market. The product or service should be positioned in such a manner that it stands apart from competing products. The positioning of a product or service indicates what the product represents, and how customers should evaluate it.

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