Markstrat Pointers 2: Market Analysis

A procedure that you may use to rapidly analyze the results is the following:

• Awareness: Check the trend in the awareness level of the various brands, forgetting can cause a drop.
Check the relative advertising budgets and advertising research percentage for the brands.

• Positioning: The perceptual maps (Semantic and MDS) give a clear graphical representation of brand
similarities and preferences.

• Purchase Intentions: The analysis of the purchase intention figures for each brand in each segment, in
the light of the perceptual mapping and semantic scale data, provides essential information about the
relationship between positioning and market share. It may show, in particular that a brand primarily
directed to a given segment is also attractive to another segment because of the lack of more suitable
brands, or because of their low awareness. The comparison between the purchase intent and awareness
figures should also give a crude evaluation of the respective merits of product improvement and
communication investments.

• Product Available in Distribution Channels: The shopping habit data should be used to investigate
the coherence of the brand/segment strategy and the allocation of the sales force. The evolution of a
firm’s sales force should be analyzed relative to the competition. The distribution panel can be used as a
global test of coherence between the brand/segment strategy and the allocation of the sales force.

• Market Share: A comparison of market share and purchase intent figures may be used to investigate
the effects of brand availability. In particular, if a brand runs out of stock, the difference between the
corresponding purchase intent and market share figures may be used as a crude estimate of lost sales. On
the other hand a market share higher than the purchase intent value for a given brand is likely to be due
to the unavailability of competing brands.