Perceptual Mapping: What Does Your Cell Phone Say About You?

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 (e.g., in a marketing analytics course), 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:

1. Picture people (camera phone lovers)
2. Gotta-have-it-all types (e.g., Motorola RAZR types)
3. Plain old telephone people (basic phone users)
4. Organized telephone people (e.g., like calendar features in the phone)
5. 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 – note: demographics match the listing order above and have *not* been written to be politically correct):

1. females, without children, poor
2. males, dumb, low income
3. females, married, dumb, poor
4. females, married, poor
5. 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?

Update (2/15/06): Zoli, I can’t log into your blog to comment on your post since I forgot my login, but I have to say that the idea is creative. Why be canned in by what’s already been done? Maybe it’s the next category leader. 🙂