Perceptual Mapping for Agricultural Marketing Research: Concept and Methodologies

Abstract

In the agriculture the focus was more on the production of commodity than  marketing of it. In the wake of the focus on doubling the income of farmers  one of the strategies can be the direct marketing of the produce. It may be  possible through the market research, which previously had been in use at very  nominal rate, but at present we have systematic market research technique and  methodology for market positioning and for the formulation of suitable strategies  for the farmers. One of the suitable and systematic marketing research techniques  is perceptual mapping. Perceptual maps are often used in marketing to visually  study relations between two or more attributes the process of making perceptual  map is perceptual mapping. However, in many perceptual maps published in the  recent literature it remains unclear what is being shown and how the relations  between the points in the map can be interpreted or even what a point represents.  The term perceptual map refers to plots obtained by a series of different techniques,  such as principal component analysis, (multiple) correspondence analysis, and  multidimensional scaling, each needing specific requirements for producing the  map and interpreting it. Some of the major flaws of published perceptual maps  are omission of reference to the techniques that produced the map, non-unit  shape parameters for the map, and unclear labelling of the points. To facilitate  this, a small set of simple icons that indicate the rules for correctly interpreting  the map. We present several examples, point out flaws and show how to produce  better maps.