Idea Mapping by Jamie Nast

Author:Jamie Nast
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2012-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

Strategic Marketing

Terry Moore, president of Terry Moore & Associates, Incorporated, provides consulting services for companies around the world. His organization specializes in strategic marketing. Terry is an expert user and facilitator of idea mapping. What follows is his answer to a conceptual dilemma. The idea map he refers to is Figure 7.1.

Figure 7.1 Cat Food Positioning Considerations

Research is often the heart of a consulting assignment, and there is frequently a wealth of data to be mined and analyzed. The choice of analytical tools can be critical to timely success.

Often the data are quantitative. When confronted by a large amount of quantitative data, there are many statistical tools available to the analyst—sampling techniques, multiple-regression, coincidence correlation, exponential smoothing, and others. Most of these tools use computers to parse and refine the raw data, which yields some sort of processed information: graphs, intercepts, or statistical measures.

Frequently our work involves large amounts of qualitative information: cultural information, customer behavior patterns, consumer-product interactions, et cetera. Each of these may involve thousands of qualitative data points. What does one do with a large amount of qualitative information? How does one begin to organize and analyze it so that one may make sense of the common realities underlying the raw data?

Too often analysts assign some sort of numerical system to the data and then use one of the statistical techniques to analyze it. That is usually not very satisfactory. What one needs is a way to conceptualize a large amount of information so that one can “get one’s mind around it” in order to understand it and be able to draw conclusions.

Idea mapping offers the power to represent qualitative data, describe relationships, and enable one to see the “big picture.” Further, mapping allows us to represent data in a way that facilitates the conceptualizing of its meaning. It provides a “map,” which makes it possible to observe macrophenomena, discover trends, and generate creative options. Idea mapping makes it possible to represent multiple dimensions of a situation without losing sight of any of its parts; it is an efficient way to manage an overwhelming amount of qualitative information. Finally, it offers a way to present information to clients in a graphic form that is both easy to understand and data rich. Often, an entire strategic plan can be represented in one map. This greatly assists in communicating our work to our clients.

The other major part of our work involves the development of complex conceptual systems for analyzing markets, product development, consumer behavior, and other complicated phenomena. The ability to conceptualize and understand these things is key to being able to succeed with a certain market, product, and customer. Here is one example [refer to Figure 7.1]:

Our challenge was to create a process for developing a product-positioning strategy for a major pet food manufacturer. The objective was to design a process for the development of a strategy that incorporated an analysis of consumer culture with all the useful theories of consumer behavior and then draw on the correct set of creative resources to produce a positioning strategy for a new line of cat food.

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