Teaching guide: market mapping

Identifies how products/brands are perceived by customers relative to other products/brands in the market.

Model/theory

Key points

Highlights that there are various criteria used by customers to judge products, eg price v quality, narrow range of products v wide range, traditional v modern. The appropriate criteria will depend on the market and how customers assess these products, eg modern v traditional, premium v basic.

When you can use this

When discussing the positioning of a product/brand. Marketing managers must analyse a market to understand what segments exist within a market, then decide which to target, and how best to position the product in the market relative to competitors.

You might want to consider:

• the different criteria customers use to assess products
• what factors might influence the positioning a business chooses
• the implication for other functional areas of choosing a particular positioning
• why a business might want to move from one position to another.

Where it's been used

• Q4, A-level paper 1, 2018

• Q11, AS paper 1, SAM set 1