Computerized Mental Maps from Consumers

PENN STATE PROFESSOR PRODUCES COMPUTERIZED MENTAL MAPS FROM CONSUMERS

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA--When it comes to marketing a product or service, marketers attempt to establish its unique place or position for it amongst its competitors. Recently, psychometricians have developed computer programs for producing maps of such mental perceptions among consumers using sophisticated mathematical models.

"Unfortunately, all such models for visually portraying a product or service's position to managers are grossly deficient for simultaneously depicting all the relevant aspects of positioning," says Wayne S. DeSarbo, The Smeal Distinguished Research Professor of Marketing in Penn State's Smeal College of Business.

DeSarbo has developed a new mathematical procedure that can recreate on a computer how consumers perceive different products in their mind.

"It simultaneously depicts the competitive market place, brand rank, and consumer attitude in a map, as well as deriving the market segments that underlie them," explains DeSarbo.

The paper, "The Joint Spatial Representation of Multiple Variable Batteries Collected in Marketing Research," was co-authored with Jianan Wu, assistant professor of marketing at Tulane University in New Orleans, LA. It will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Marketing Research.

DeSarbo has published over 100 articles in such journals as the Journal of Marketing Research, Psychometrika, Journal of Consumer Research, and the Journal of Mathematical Psychology. He was awarded the 1988 Raymond B. Cattell Award for his outstanding research contributions in mathematical psychology and nominated as President of the Psychometric Society. In addition, DeSarbo was awarded the University of Michigan Senior Research award for his research performance at the School of Business. He was one of a few prominent Marketing scholars to be selected by the Royal Swedish Academy to serve on the Nobel Prize Nomination Committee. He was the Chair of the Statistics in Marketing Section of the American Statistical Society.

DeSarbo serves on the review boards of Marketing Science, the Journal of Consumer Research, and the Journal of Marketing Research. He has ten years of work experience in marketing research at AT&T and Bell Laboratories; and has been a consultant for such diverse firms as AMERITECH, AT&T, Ad Audit, Pfizer Drug, SENMED, Pacific Bell, Ethicon, General Motors, Hughes Aircraft, GTE, Motorola, Marketing Metrics, Blue Cross, Eli Lilly Co., and Merck Pharmaceuticals. He is CEO and owner of ANALYTIKA Marketing Sciences, Inc.

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Editors: Wayne DeSarbo is at 814-364-2568 or e-mail at [email protected]. For a copy of the paper, contact Steve Infanti in the Smeal College Media Relations Office at 814-863-3798 or [email protected].