How Customers Perceive Products or Suppliers
Perhaps one of the most flexible tools is a simple two-axis plot of characteristics. Typically, this is used to show how customers perceive products or suppliers: so you might plot cost against performance, for example. The tool is also often called the brand positioning map.
The tool allows you to create a visual representation of how a customer sees different suppliers. You look for a gap in the perceptual map that could be filled, creating a product that has unique positioning. Note, however, that not all places on the perceptual map would be beneficial: e.g. in the cost vs performance example, high cost and low performance would be a poor position to occupy, whereas the other quadrants all have value.
