Perceptual Maps in Marketing

Perceptual Maps in Marketing
The perceptual maps in marketing simulation involved a company called Thorr dedicated to the manufacturer of motorcycles. The company’s target market is the high end market composed of customer between the ages of 35-50 years old. Some of the key strategies the company has utilized to market its product is focusing on lifestyle and the quality of the product to provide a superior motorcycle for its clientele. The company currently controls 40% of this oligopoly marketplace. In an oligopoly market structure there are a limited number of competitors (Varian, 2003). The purpose of this report is to describe the actions taken by the student during three phases of the simulation and to discuss important marketing concepts such as differentiation, positioning and product lifecycle.
Relationship between Differentiation and Positioning of Products or Services
The purpose of the simulation is to develop a positioning strategy for the company. The first phase of the perceptual map simulation involves selecting the parameters related to the motorcycle industry that aligned with the product the company is offering. The simulation taught me that the optimum amount of parameters that should be chosen for a particular product is four. Choosing more than four does not allow the marketer to highlight the product’s strengths in order to create effective marketing campaigns. The nine parameters I had to choose from were: lifestyle image, product design, cool, product uniqueness, service offering, price, engine capacity safety, and quality engineering. Based on the company’s status as a provider to motorcycle in the high-end of the marketplace I choose these four parameters: lifestyle image, product design and styling, price and product uniqueness. The result of my selection was that I ended up choosing three of the four optimum parameters for this particular product. The parameter that I should not have selected was product uniqueness. In this case quality engineering covers the important aspects of product uniqueness. An important parameter that I failed to choose was service offering. Service offerings are utilized to ensure loyalty among customers and distribution channels which include club memberships, maintenance training, and financial services (Perceptual Maps in Marketing Simulation, 2008).
Expectation in Repositioning of the Product
The second phase of the simulation involved making a decision about the company future positioning in the marketplace. Tough economic times along with an aging focus group of customer were endangering the company solid 40% market share. The two primary choices were repositioning the CruiserThorr model or introducing a new model, the RRoth, to achieve penetration among younger customers. Based on the current trends and the fact that the company’s main product seemed to be entering into the maturing stage of its lifecycle I decided that repositioning was not the best option and the company needed a new product to expand its customer based. In the maturing stage of a product’s lifecycle companies have trouble differentiating their product and opportunities for growth are limited since the customer base is capped (Netmba, 2008).
My decision for the second phase of the simulation was to introduce the RRoth model to capitalize on the marketplace for younger customers. Once I decided on the strategy of introducing the RRoth the next step of this simulation phase was choosing the marketing mix for the product. The marketing mix was popularized by Neil Borden in 1965 in his article The Concept of the Marketing Mix (Marketingteacher, 2008). The four components of the marketing mix are known as the 4Ps which are price, promotion, place and place. The decisions I made regarding the marketing mix for the RRoth are summarized in the table below.
Price Place Promotion Services
$13,000-$15,000 Dealers * Sponsor events such *Customization