Wake Forest University | School of Business

Marketing Analytics
BAN 6065
Professor Jia Li
Spring 2021

Today’s Agenda
• Key Tool for Positioning and Competitor
Analytics
– Perceptual Mapping

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 Perceptual Mapping: Overview
• How do consumers evaluate brands/products?

• What is a perceptual map?

• How to construct perceptual maps?

– Attribute-based: Asynchronous Lecture
– Similarity-based: Synchronous Lecture

• How to use perceptual maps?

Brand Evaluation
• Only certain dimensions are keys in comparing brands.
E.g.,
– Breakfast Snack: glazed donut, toast, muffin, etc.
1. Easy to Prepare 2. Sweetness

– Pain Reliever: Tylenol, Advil, Dartil, etc.

1. Gentleness 2. Effectiveness

– Soft Drink: Coke, Pepsi, 7Up, Diet Coke, Diet 7Up, etc.
1. Cola – Noncola 2. Diet – Nondiet

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What is a Perceptual (Positioning)
Map?
• Represent consumer perceptions spatially by means
of a visual display.
– Perceived relationships among firms or brands are
represented as geometric relationships among points in a
multidimensional space.

• These geometric representations are often called

spatial maps.
– Axes represent underlying dimensions that consumers
use to form perceptions of firms or brands.

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 How to gather perception data?
• Two approaches
– Direct Approach: in the direct approach to gathering
perception data, the consumers are asked to judge how
similar or dissimilar the various brands are.
– Derived Approach: attribute-based approach requiring
the consumers to rate the brands on the identified
attributes.

Question Time
• Question 1
• Question 2

Accompanying Questions:
https://wakeforest.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9LgZS8N3HMEqVtI
(Link available at Canvas; right below the link to this video)

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 Attribute-Based Approach

Attribute-based Approach
• One problem with the similarity-based approach is
that the dimensionality increases rapidly
• 10 brands implies 10*(10-1)/2=45 pair wise
comparisons

• If we know what attributes consumers “use”, why

not ask them to rate these directly?
• Derived Approach: attribute-based approach
requiring the consumers to rate the brands on the
identified attributes.

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 Attribute-Based Approach
• Step 1: Identify the key attributes.
– There are situations in which marketing managers may
have ideas about which perceptual attributes their brand
and those of their competitors are considered prior to
purchase.

• Step 2: Ask the respondents to rate the brands on the

identified attributes (e.g., using semantic differential
or Likert scales)

Attribute-Based Approach:
Semantic Differential

Does not whiten

Whitens teeth ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
teeth
Does not prevent
Prevents tooth decay ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
tooth decay
⋮ Blank Blank Blank Blank Blank Blank Blank Blank Blank Blank Blank
Does not protect
Sensitivity Protection ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____
sensitivity

If attribute ratings are obtained, a similarity measure (such as

Euclidean distance) is derived for each pair of brands.

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 Attribute-Based Approach:
Likert Scales

[Insert Brand Name] is a brand of toothpaste that [insert attribute].

Neither Agree
Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree
Nor Disagree

If attribute ratings are obtained, a similarity measure (such as

Euclidean distance) is derived for each pair of brands.

Conducting Attribute-Based Perceptual

Map: Obtaining Input Data

Aqua- Plus
Crest Colgate Aim Tom’s Ultra Brite Close-Up Pepsodent Sensodyne
Fresh White
Attribute 1

Attribute 2

Attribute M

A N by M matrix.
Each cell is the average score across all respondents.

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 Attribute-Based Approach:
Collecting Preference Information

I believe that [insert Brand Name] is an excellent [insert brand

category].
Neither Agree Strongly
Strongly Agree Agree Disagree
Nor Disagree Disagree

Compute the mean to obtain N overall preference scores, one

for each brand.

Question Time
• Question 3

Accompanying Questions:
https://wakeforest.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9LgZS8N3HMEqVtI
(Link available at Canvas; right below the link to this video)

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Data Exercise: Attribute-based Method
> library(ggplot2)
> Temp.df <- read.csv("C:/R/TopBSchools-AR.csv")
> TopBSchools.df <- Temp.df[,-1]
> rownames(TopBSchools.df) <- Temp.df[,1]

# Suppose previous study shows “Prestigious” and “Placement” are the

two key attributes
# Scatter plot comparing “Prestigious” and “Placement”
ggplot(data = TopBSchools.df, aes(x = Placement, y = Prestigious)) +
annotate(geom = "text", x = TopBSchools.df$Placement, y =
TopBSchools.df$Prestigious, label = row.names(TopBSchools.df)) +
ggtitle("Attribute-Based Perceptual Map of Top Business Schools")

Attribute-based Approach:
Pros and Cons
• It is easy to identify respondents with homogeneous perceptions.
• The respondents can be clustered based on the attribute ratings.
• It is also easier to label the dimensions.
• A disadvantage is that the researcher must identify all the salient
attributes, a difficult task.
• The spatial map obtained depends upon the attributes identified.

It may be best to use both these approaches in a complementary way.

Direct similarity judgments may be used for obtaining the spatial map, and
attribute ratings may be used as an aid to interpreting the dimensions of the
perceptual map.

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 Case study: Alpha Computer Company
(The McKinsey Quarterly)

• Supplied minicomputers for use primarily as servers in

network applications
• High engineering skills and technological performance at
reasonable cost
• Believed two important technological attributes
– Processor speed in MIPS (millions of instructions per second)
– Secondary access speed (how quickly the computer accessed data
from an external storage device)
• Construct perceptual map based on the beliefs of
– Price
– Benefits (based on the two important attributes)

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 Question Time
• Question 4

Accompanying Questions:
https://wakeforest.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9LgZS8N3HMEqVtI
(Link available at Canvas; right below the link to this video)

Which two attributes are the most

important ones?
• Regression

• Factor analysis

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 Regression
    =  +  1 +
 2 + …+   + 

Factor Analysis
• Factor analysis is a class of procedures primarily
used for data reduction and summarization.
– There may be a large number of variables, most of
which are correlated
– Relationships among sets of many interrelated variables
are examined and represented in terms of a few
underlying factors.

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 Use factor analysis to pin down the most
important factors/axes
1. Factor analysis to pin down the 2 most important
factors/axes

2. Put the brands on the map according to their factor scores

Question Time
• Question 5

Accompanying Questions:
(Link available at Canvas; right below the link to this video)

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