Gain access to unparalleled insights into the consumer’s mind … Access perceptual mapping techniques that capture differentiation due to both discrete and continuous perceptions … ….. No perceptual mapping technique, till date, has extracted factors that explain differentiation due to discrete perceptions such as “American cars versus Non-American cars”

• When to use EZMap?
  
  

  Brand Management in most companies needs to frequently re-assess or reformulate their Brand Strategies, Global or umbrella Brand Positioning, or their strategy and positioning for individual product(s)/line(s). This could be necessitated by changes in increasingly competitive marketplaces, or natural evolutions of the product categories. This would result in companies having to re-establish new brand positioning and subsequent communication strategies for broadcast, print, online, and other media.

  Consumer research measuring the target audience perceptions and attitudes, (among other relevant measures), is a typical first step in undertaking such Brand Strategy and Brand Re-positioning tasks. Consumer responses are then analyzed through multivariate techniques of perceptual mapping to understand the co-location of important consumer segments and brands. These perceptual maps form the basic knowledge base upon which the formulation of Brand Strategy and Brand Positioning should rest.

• Why use EZMap?
  
  

  EZMap Factor and EZMap Scale will help Brand Managers and Market Researchers better understand consumer perceptions for formulating optimal Brand strategies and differentiation-maximizing positions for Brands. Analysis from these products is more complete and comprehensive compared to comparable techniques in the marketplace. Brand Managers, Analysts, and market researchers would be able to clearly see clear implications for communication and copy strategy.

• What is EZMap?
  
  

  Suman Inc. has “raised the bar” on standards for perceptual mapping. It presents two new innovations in perceptual mapping that are typically used by market researchers and marketing analysts.

• EZMap Factor and EZMap Scale are two independent analytical modules for Hybrid Factor Analysis, and Hybrid Multidimensional Scaling, respectively.
  
  
  • EZMap Factor:

    Conducts Hybrid (simultaneous continuous and discrete) Factor Analysis on brand-attribute data. Assume 100 consumers rate 10 brands on 5 product attributes (perceptions, attitudes, etc) each, using a rating scale.

    Why use EZMap Factor?

    Classical Factor Analysis would need the data from all 100 consumers in a single file, stacked one below the other, 10 rows and 5 columns at a time. Thus, the input file would have 10 * 100 = 1000 rows, and 5 columns. The analysis would produce a set of factor loadings (5 numbers) and a set of factor scores (500 numbers) for each factor. This analysis would treat all 100 consumers similarly. Depending on the rotation chosen (an arbitrary choice), the factor scores and the corresponding factor loadings would change.

    Unlike these classical factor analysis techniques, EZMap Factor generates perceptual maps that

    • Force the brand differentiation factors to be either continuous or discrete (e.g., continuous as in fuel economy of cars, and discrete as in American versus Non-American cars) factors.
      
      
    • Provide a unique orientation and interpretation of the brand (non-rotatable axes) loadings and attribute scores.
      
      
    • Account for consumer differences. The analysis does not just provide brand scores and attribute loadings, but also consumer or segment importance for each of the extracted perceptual factors. Future versions of EZMap would also have hidden cluster and/or latent class extensions.
      
      
    
    
    
  • EZMap Scale:

         Hybrid Multidimensional Scaling: Analyze multiple correlation/covariance matrices simultaneously to reduce dimensionality of the variables.