Different ways of producing perceptual maps

There are three ways of producing perceptual maps. But most people, in general, are familiar with only one type of perceptual mapping – Multi Dimensional Scaling map. So let us delve a

little into these 3 types of perceptual maps. This basically helps us understand the different ways of producing perceptual maps.

The three types of maps are produced by three different techniques and they in turn have different usages:

1. Preference map

2. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) map

3. Correspondence map

Each map requires a different view of the input data, and the maps are used to study different aspects of the marketing problem.

1. Preference map (for study of consumer preferences)

A basic preference map shows consumers’ preferences for a set of products. It is more useful than presenting a table of mean ratings. In a typical preference analysis, consumers are surveyed

for their preferences for a set of products.

2. Multidimensional scaling map (for analysis of product competitiveness)

Multidimensional scaling is a graphic technique for analyzing the similarities (or dissimilarities) between products. It is not meant for studying consumer preference, but for analyzing competitive positioning of the products in the minds of the consumers.

3. Correspondence map to explore information in any frequency table

Correspondence analysis is an ingenious device to explore the associative relationships and clustering patterns in the frequency data. There are again two types of correspondence maps:

1) Simple correspondence map

2) Multiple correspondence map

Multiple correspondence analysis is especially effective at simplifying complex multi-way tables, and making them into a single display similar to that generated by the simple

correspondence analysis (except there will be more points on the map).

Author :- Aditya Kiran Muppasani

Group :- Operations 3