Methods For Determining

Competition : Consumer Judgment

Understanding competition from the consumers eyes
• The consumer based judgments are more of a paper-and-pencil
exercise namely focus groups, shopping mall intercepts
• It provides insights into potential future market structure &
broader definition of the current structure
Few customer centre techniques
• Judged overall similarity measures btwn pairs of products that can be
geometrically represented in a multidimensional space
• Dimensions = attributes which customers use to make a judgment
• Brands located close to each other are perceived to be similar and can be
defined as one market
• Analysis begins with a pre-specified set
of alternatives and products are identified that satisfy the need
• Information is analyzed by examining the cluster
Creating a perceptual map
1. Identify your competitors
2. Expose consumers to the stimuli (i.e product / brand)
3. Guide consumer classification
4. Identify parameters in process of classification
5. Place your competitors
6. Share your map
Ill: Perceptual Map
• Similarity within consideration : Customers take a large set of
products and divide them into group of items that can be
substituted for one another i.e items that would be considered
together on a purchase decision.
• Customers then judge the similarity of the products within the
group
• Collects similarity judgments after consideration sets are formed
Product Categorization
• Expose consumers to the stimuli
• Observe classification
• Probe for reasons / parameters used by the consumer
• Note your observations
Minty, mouth
freshners

Chocolaty wafer
biscuits
• Product deletion : Based on customer’s reaction to product
unavailability
• Products in a set are assumed to be substitutes and
consequently form a market, if a product is missing from the set
they will invariably look at the substitute rather than from outside
the set.
Product Deletion
• Expose consumers to the stimuli
• Present two product categories i.e varied tray usage
• Present a need to the consumer, remove a product from the
said type
• Ask consumer to make a choice and probe the reason
• Need : Eat something refreshing & cool
• Substitution in use : Estimates degree of competitiveness
through judged similarities in usage context.
• Customers list the usage of certain products. Next, a fresh or
same sample respondents list other products that provide the
same uses and rate their appropriateness for the use of
occasion
• Helps produce a large no.of generic competitors or even
budget competition
Thank You!