...Perceptual Maps in Marketing Simulation MKT/421 Perceptual mapping is a technique used by marketers to visually display the perceptions of current and potential customers. Thorr Motorcycles is a billion dollar company that offers services in rider training, dealer training, dealer software packages, and motorcycle rentals. The image of Thorr Motorcycles have been sought by customers for years but it is a different image that new customers are looking for. The purpose of this simulation is to focus on three objectives. The first objective is to analyze the situation by constructing a perceptual map. The second objective is to recommend solutions for the organization by creating a marketing plan with a budget to determine whether to reposition the organization or launch a new product. The final objective is the results that determine the parameter values for the future of the organization. Phase I - The Situation The major situations in this simulations was Thorr Motorcyles faced a decrease in sales of its top product, the Cruiser Thorr. Other situations in the simulation were the need to create a market plan that repostion the Cruiser Thorr in the market versus launching a new motorcycle, and plotting the Crusier Thorr brand attributes on a perceptual map. Thorr’s Motorcycles lifestyle image is important to the organization because it influences customers to purchase the top selling...
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...favorable perception by investors (stock profile) and lenders 2. Symbolic positions o Self-image enhancement o Ego identification o Belongingness and social meaningfulness o Affective fulfillment 3. Experiential positions o Provide sensory stimulation o Provide cognitive stimulation Perceptual mapping Perceptual mapping provides answers to these vital questions: • What is your market position relative to your competitors? • What are your strengths and weaknesses? • Where are there gaps in the market? • How do you measure up to the “ideal?” • What strategies will improve your competitive position so that you are both relevant to the market and differentiated from competitors? The process includes developing the attributes—either functional, emotional, or both. Survey respondents rate the client brand and competitive brands on each of the attributes, and attribute importance and ideal attribute ratings are obtained. These perceptions are used to create the maps, and analysis of gaps and ideal points is performed. An Example of Perceptual Mapping This hypothetical example of the beverage market illustrates one of the primary results of a perceptual mapping study—the map itself. For illustrative purposes, this example uses types of beverages instead of actual beverage...
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...Using Perceptual Maps in Marketing Simulation Marketing /421 As a marketing manager for Cruiser Thorr who sells high end motorcycles. This organization is growing at a rapid pace. Indeed there is more structure needed to the marketing piece to sustain a successful business. Being that the industry of motorcycles is increasing annually. This organization must also work to satisfy the needs of their target customers. The organization must also work to differentiate themselves from other similar organizations as well. Key components in my opinion are the product uniqueness, safety, quality engineering and price. Situation Current situation is the fact that there needs to be an significant market plan put in place to help increase sales and meet the needs of young and older customers. There are fundamental assets that focus on 35-50 year olds. As well as 21-35 year olds who are buying motorcycles. The older clientele seem to be not interested in the current lifestyles that Cruiser Thorr symbolizes. However the younger customers do not have the disposable funds to buy the motorcycles. They prefer a lower cost that fits into their budget. Other concerns are factors related to their competitors. The worst part is that the competitors are eating into their market share. In which they...
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...MKTG 4120 Case Study – Positioning the ConneCtor 2011 Prepared by LI Danyang Sunny 1155002138 Question 1: Two dimensions were applied in this case since the third dimension did not capture significant variance compared with the sum of first two. (See Figure 1) The variance explained by the horizontal dimension (46.6%) was two times more than the vertical horizontal (20.8%), so the horizontal dimension was more than twice important in explaining customer perceptions than the vertical one. The horizontal axis associated mostly with attributes “Multimedia”, “Stylish” and “Monitor” while the vertical axis associated mostly with “Sturdiness”, “Light Weight” and “Connectivity”. (See Figure 2) From the perception map, Connector 10L performed the best in terms of Connectivity, Data Entry and Third Party Support. Moreover, it also had advantages on its weight. However, Connector 10L was not attractive enough to customers in terms of Multimedia Function, Stylish and Monitor Quality. It is noticed that there was a lack of other brands near Connector 10L’s position (Only Palm VII), which indicated a potential opportunity for new positioning – wireless access feature. (See Figure 2) Question 2: In the positioning map with Preference Vector, it could be found that Connector 10L is the 5th preferred brand chosen by participants, ranked after HP Jornada, Casio Cassuioeia, Compaq IPac and Palm VII. Overall preference for handheld devices increased with Memory, Software and...
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...Principles Of Marketing Submitted to: Final project on: Ms. Nadia Rahim Submitted by: Madiha Fazal Sheeba Siddiqui Syed Umer Noman Abdul Sheikh Moiz Afsheen Raza Zaidi Certificate: It is to certify that all the work submitted is authentic and genuine. Preface This project report has been prepared to meet the requirement of the final project of Principles of Marketing of program MBA. For the preparation of this project we have visited K&N’s outlets and its head office and had a meeting with marketing manager of K&N’s. The rationale behind visiting the company is to study and evaluate the marketing and positioning strategies of K&N’s products the history and development of the food market. The report starts with the basic history and introduction of the company, its products and competitors it also covers the general information of the market. The information presented in this report has been obtained from the company’s personnel consumers and the market and company’s websites. Group members Sheeba Siddiqui Syed Umer Noman Madiha Fazal Afsheen Raza Abdul Moiz Contents Introduction 3 History: 3 Working Process: 3 PRODUCTS: 4 CURRENT MARKET SITUATION: 4 COMPETITORS 5 Menu foods: 5 Man-o-salwa 5 Pk Foods 5 Dawn foods 5 Competing products 5 Earlier product to satisfy need: 5 Researching Organizational Marketing Positioning: 6 Target Marketing Segments 6 • Working...
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...Arab Open University Faculty of Business Studies B301A – Making Sense of Strategy (I) Fall Semester 2012 -2013 Tutor-Marked Assignment, TMA This tutor-marked assignment draws mainly on Blocks 1 & 2, “Readings for Blocks 1 & 2”, Units 1 & 2 of Block 3, and the first 6 Readings of “Readings for Block 3”. It consists of five (5) questions and accounts for 20% of the total grade assigned to the course. This assignment will be graded out of 100 marks, of which 80% of these marks will be allocated to your answer for the different questions. The remaining 20% will be distributed among the following criteria: * 5% for proper referencing * 5% for presentation of ideas and organization of the answer * 5% for adherence to specified word count * 5% for the use of the E-library/External resources. In this TMA, you are expected to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of the importance of the business environment for strategic management and for acquiring and improving the market position of organizations. You are also, required to apply various learned concepts in strategic positioning, strategy process, knowledge management, resource-based approaches of competitive advantage. In addition, you should be able to recognize how the strategic choices made by organizations are influenced by a school of thoughts or a particular theory. In your answer, your workis expected to show critical, analytical and justification skills of the subject matter...
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...What is Strategy? – Michael E. Porter I. Operational effectiveness is not strategy So in the quest to beat competition managers focus on improving quality, speed and productivity all related to operational effectiveness. But in this way, they move further away from viable competitive positions which can only be achieved by an appropriate strategy. Positioning which was once the way to go about beating competition is now rejected, since its too static. Rivals can easily copy the market position and competitive advantage. However, that is not entirely true as hypercompetition is a self-inflicted wound. It is important to watch out for what your competitors are doing, but improving operational effectiveness alone is not enough, and that cannot be your only strategy. Operational effectiveness and strategy are both important for superior performance which is what a firm aims for. A company can beat rivals if it can stand out, establish a difference it can preserve. Basically a company can either provide greater value to customers or comparable value at low prices, or both. Delivering greater value means higher unit prices, greater efficiency means lower unit costs. Cost arises from performing activities and cost advantage comes from performing activities more efficiently than your competitors. This can be in the choice of the activity or how the activity is performed. So activities are what creates competitive advantage. Operational effectiveness means performing similar...
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...Do you think Dell is well positioned with respect to its competitors? Not yet because Dell still left behind HP and IBM. People who want flexibility in their PCs tend to buy HP brand. For instance, HP Power Distribution Rack which controls three-phase power distribution across a row of server racks brings enhanced flexibility to IT personnel who are seeking to place power where it is needed, but without over provisioning or otherwise wasting the precious resource. In other hand people who want high performance, they tend to buy IBM brand. For instance, IBM System x server (formerly IBM eServer™ xSeries®) brought up database application, all of the performance number were beyond expectation. Actually, Compaq is well-positioned because its non price attribute position is balance both in performance and flexibility. Which competitor(s) should Dell be the most concerned about? Why? Competitor: IBM because as you can see in the positioning map it’s the nearest competitor that dell face. Dell has to compete on the nearest one because there just little difference in performance so it can be easily pursued by improving performance quality at least same as IBM. Compared with Hp, the difference is too far which means the capability is indeed totally different so it will be too difficult to be pursued and it sounds unbalanced competition. Source: IBM's personal computer business is taken over by Chinese electronics giant Lenovo, while IBM itself focuses more and more on...
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...The Petal Diagram I’ve always thought of my startups as the center of the universe. So I would begin by putting my company in the center of the slide. In this example the startup is creating a new category – a lifelong learning network for entrepreneurs. To indicate where their customers for this new market would come from, they drew the 5 adjacent market segments: corporate, higher education, startup ecosystem, institutions, and adult learning skills that they believed their future customers were in today. So to illustrate this they drew these adjacent markets as a cloud surrounding their company. (Unlike the traditional X/Y graph you can draw as many adjacent market segments as you’d like.) Steve Blank Your startup at the center Then they filled in the market spaces with the names of the companies that are representative players in each of the adjacent markets. Ads not by this site Steve Blank Fill in the segments Then they annotated the private companies with the amount of private capital they had raised. This lets potential investors understand that other investors were interested in the space and thought it was important enough to invest. (And plays on the “no VC wants to miss a hot space” mindset.) Steve Blank Show capital raised Finally, you could show the current and projected market sizes of the adjacent markets, which allows the startups to have a “how big can our new market be?” conversation with investors. (If you wanted to get fancy, you could scale...
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...Network Troubleshooting Case Study Part 1: Troubleshooting a Connection Problem When dealing with a network connectivity issue it’s always best to start at the location closest to the source of the problem. In this case the problem seems to accessing anything remotely from the office computers. Since the office is using a cable modem as their connection to the outside world the troubleshooting should start there. First, check to see that the cable modem is powered up and then verify that the lights on the modem indicate that the modem is online with the provider via the “on-line” status. Moreover; the next step is to contact the service provider to assist with the connection to the outside line if my aforementioned statement is not verified. Assuming that the modem is working the next thing to check is whether the modem appears to be sending traffic by checking the send/receive lights. If that is OK then the next thing to check is the router. First, verify that the router is powered up and shows a connection to the cable modem. In order for the other computers to access the internet they must first access the router. It may be necessary to reboot the router but it should indicate an active internet connection as well as connection lights for each of the seven PCs that are connected. Finally the technician should check the Ethernet cable between the router and the modem as well as all the connections coming into the router to ensure they are...
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...Decision-Making Process MGT/230 Management Theory and Practice July 25, 2011 Sylvia Ramirez-Cahan Decision-Making Process For the past year I have been struggling with the decision of whether or not to continue my education. The factors that influenced my decision to pursue my Bachelors degree were the financial commitment, time, personal responsibilities, professional responsibilities, and the affect a Bachelors degree would have on my career. My decision process involved the following steps. First, I carefully reviewed my financial obligations, researched expected educational expenses, and researched options to finance my educational expenses. Next, I considered the time I would need to commitment to my courses, and examined my ability and readiness to prioritize my educational responsibilities with my personal and professional responsibilities. Last, I researched the benefits of a Bachelors degree and the potential affect it could have on my career. According to Bateman and Snell (2011), the decision-making process consists of the following stages: identify and diagnose the problem, generate alternative solutions, evaluate alternatives, make the choice, implement the decision, and evaluate the decision. In comparison, my decision process to continue my education involved three steps: identifying the problem, making the decision, and implementing the decision. In April I started classes one week after making my decision. If my decision...
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...Decision-Making Process Many changes and turns fill our lives. Decisions allow individuals to navigate life in an easy and efficient manner. Although decisions help navigate life, the wrong decisions can be detrimental to just not the person’s life but also the lives of those in connection with the person. This paper will cover the steps in a decision-making process and how making the right choices will improve the whole outcome. When relocating from the southern region of the United States to the northern region, an individual must put various degrees of thought and make sure that the decision to make the move will benefit the individuals of the family and not cause any harm to those same folks. When making a decision for the move, the Gaffney family had to ensure that they would first have the money to make such a move, the timing of the move did not interfere with any school schedules, and there would be a place to live once the move was made. As discussed in the reading, there are many more steps involved in the decision making process that the Gaffney family overlooked while making such an important decision. The stages described in the book Management: Leading and Collaborating in a Competitive World are Identifying and Diagnosing the Problem, Generating Alternative Solutions, Evaluating Alternatives, Making the Choice, Implementing the Decision, and Evaluating the Decision (Bateman & Snell, 2010). There were several steps that the Gaffney family did not take...
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...ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION AND THE TYRANNY OF SMALL DECISIONS William E. Odum[1] BioScience Vol 32 No.9; Oct 1982; pp:728-729. Economist Alfred E Kahn's premise of "the tyranny of small decisions" is applicable to environmental issues. Examples of so-called "small decision effects" range from loss of prime farmland and acid precipitation to mismanagement of the Florida Everglades. A holistic rather than reductionist perspective is needed to avoid the undesirable, cumulative effects of small decisions (Accepted for publication 2 March 1982). Ideally, society's problems are resolved through a system of nested levels of public decision are made by the individual or by small groups of individuals. Higher decision-making levels range from local and state governments to the higher decision-making levels range from local and state governments to the highest levels of the federal government. Theoretically, the highest levels are composed of experts whose joint decisions provide constraints in the form of "rules" for decisions made at the lower levels. Unfortunately, important decisions are often reached in an entirely different manner. A series of small, apparently independent decisions are made. Often by individuals or small groups of individuals. The end result is that a big decision occurs (post hoc) as an accretion of these small decisions: the central question is never addressed directly at the higher decision-making levels. Usually, this process does not produce...
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...The purpose of this article is to describe the implementation of value stream management and lean accounting at Watlow Electric Manufacturing Company. Value stream management and lean accounting are designed to support lean manufacturing where value is defined from the customer's perspective, work is organized by value stream, supply flow is defined in terms of demand pull, and employees are empowered and focused on quality and continuous improvement. Rather than organizing by functional departments (i.e., the traditional approach associated with responsibility accounting), a company using value stream management develops an organization structure based on value streams, where a value stream includes everything involved in creating value for a customer, e.g., everything associated with a product or product line. Value streams tend to include the work of many functional areas such as product design, production, marketing, sales, distribution, and cash collection. Metrics or measurements are created for each value stream. Some examples used by Watlow Electric include: safety (case incident rate), quality (defects per million), delivery (on-time to promise percentage), cost (sales per full-time equivalent), and inventory (days of inventory). Standard costs, cost allocations, and variance analysis are not used. Instead, only "directly incurred costs" are used for decisions related to the value streams. According to the article there are seven steps for implementation. The first step...
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...The basic issue of the case is a company called Paragon Tool possibly merging with Monitor Robotics. The CEO that goes by Nicky, has to weigh all the options and compare the costs to the benefits. The merger might not sit right with the community, which has a lot of respect for the company the way it is right now. Another possible issue is a failure in the merger such as the Monitor Robotics technology not being able to be used with Paragon machines. This would mean a huge cost with the possibility of having to let go of employees by downsizing to try and stay afloat. On the other hand if it was successful the merger would bring in more employees, more customers, and just make the company better in general. Problems with merger also includes the current CFO William Littlefield who is very opposed to the merger, and Paragon Tools would have to consider the cost of losing him as well as hiring another knowledgeable CFO to replace him. Another issue brought up in the case is upper management not being unanimous in the approval of this merger. To have any chance for success in this merger, all the upper management has to agree on it because the employees will pick up on any hesitation and it could send the whole process awry. PART II: Using a minimum of 200 words each answer the following questions. (50 Points) 1. Why might Paragon Tool want to pursue acquisition of MonitorRobotics? What are the associated risks? Paragon would want to acquire Monitor to expand its current...
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