Last
week I was reading a detailed research report regarding cell phones in
order to get a more structured understanding of the consumer
marketplace as it relates to upstream B2B vendors.
Now
in business school, one may learn about concepts such as perceptual
mapping, a combination of numerical factor-analysis and marketing
technique that may be used to graphically place vendor products in a
two-dimensional chart, where the products may have many more underlying
features which actually makeup the products. Wikipedia has a sample
chart here,
to give you an idea of what perceptual maps look like. What is nice
about certain-types of perceptual maps is that the charts are borne out
of people’s actual market behaviors or expressed preferences (as
opposed to some ad-hoc or opinion-driven marketing method).
In
the report I was reading, there was a picture of a less-frequently used
perceptual map that grabbed my attention. Basically instead of
products, the perceptual map placed cell phone features (e.g.,
calendar, push-to-talk, text messaging) on a two-dimensional map with
the axes ranging from a) low- to high-technological advancement and b)
high-entertainment to high-utility.
Based
on the features (each a point) on this perceptual map, one could
identify five primary clusters of points. These clusters were
essentially viewed as market segments of mobile phone consumers and
were divided as follows:
- Picture people (camera phone lovers)
- Gotta-have-it-all types (e.g., Motorola RAZR types)
- Plain old telephone people (basic phone users)
- Organized telephone people (e.g., like calendar features in the phone)
- Always on-the-road types (e.g., like productivity & synchronization functions)
It’s
funny when you look at the high probability demographics for these
mobile phone segments (and I will take some liberties here to boil down
the paragraph of demographics to a few words (demographics match the
listing order above and have *not* been written to be politically
correct):
- females, without children, poor
- males, dumb, low income
- females, married, dumb, poor
- females, married, poor
- males, married, highly educated
I
fall into the organized telephone or plain telephone crowd with my
basic Siemens flip-phone. What does that say about me? I’ve never
really cared too much about image, but what am I communicating to
people by my use of phone? Is your ringtone a mating call in disguise?
What does your phone say about you?
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