Computer Program Abstracts

tomers (and potential customers) where the bases for grouping are the ways customers perceive and evaluate products and services, 2. evolving means of describing profiles of market opportunities suitable for developing and matching profiles of products and services, 3. comparing alternative promotional strategies by their relationship to changes in customers' perceptions of available offerings or their evaluations of new products and services. The marketing implications of this computerized research suggest several areas for further research as well as certain specific applications: 1. The way in which products or services seem to cluster in a many-dimensioned cognitive space can provide insight into people's perceptions of interproduct similarities and preferences. 2. An indication of the number of perceived dimensions that must be considered to produce the perceptual configuration can provide the marketer with a better understanding of the relative importance of these characteristics. 3. An examination of where "our brand" is positioned relative to competing brands on each axis provides some basis for understanding the brands' relative strengths and weaknesses, e.g., our brand may be appropriately priced but poorly engineered. 4. The Ideal Point [1] provides an interesting concept for describing preference since a hypothetical product or service at this point may possibly be viewed as most preferred. If no such offering exists, then presumably a new entrant might be tailored accordingly or an existing entry modified to suit.2 5. From data on perceived similarities and preference of a representative sample of customers, natural market segments can be revealed. Thus, a market segment is defined as customers with similar mental models of brands in question. This process might also be done repeatedly through time to track trends and patterns in product and brand sales. 6. It appears that products or services can be mapped not only for customers, but also for salesmen, product managers, advertising people, distributors, and others through a comparison of their mental pictures of the market place and their opinions of market offerings. In some situations, a lack of congruence at different levels from customer to marketing management may not matter. In others, a lack of commonality may be disastrous to effective market planning and promotion. 7. Advertisements might also be subjected to the MAPP evaluation method which could lead to guidance in planning and promoting new and existing offerings in at least these possible ways: (a) to move the advertised brand toward the Ideal Point along a desirable path (with or without ---