Week Five - Perceptual Maps

Welcome to week five! Before I start I must inform you this was my favourite week so far. For the past few weeks I have been telling you about the stages in perception. This week we learnt about perceptual maps. To be honest I have never heard of perceptual maps, so I was quite intrigued.

Perceptual mapping is a marketing technique in which consumer's opinions and views about a product or service are marked or mapped on a chart. Consumers ask themselves questions about their personal experience with the product or service, for example its performance, packaging, price, size, etc. Using their data, they then transfer their answers onto a chart (perceptual map) using the Likert scale. This will then show companies how their product is doing and how they can improve their product or service. Egan, (2007) explains a perceptual map as, ‘A matrix used to establish a customer’s view point of the organisation relative to its competitors.’

Here is an example of a perceptual map:

 (learningmarketing.net, 2010)

Ruth then set us the task where we had to create a perceptual map on different brands of jeans. The questions that I asked myself were if the jeans were high or low quality and if they were expensive or inexpensive.

At the end, this is what I created:

It allowed me to see where different brands could improve and what the consumers opinion was of their product and brand.