Creating perceptual maps with text mining approach in global brand positioning: An application in the mobile phone industry

Perception maps are visual diagrams that most effectively show where and how the brand and its competitors are positioned in the consumer's mind when making brand positioning decisions in the context of strategic marketing. Brands in perception maps are positioned with data collected from consumers. For this, consumers' opinions about the brands to be positioned on their perception maps are needed. While perception maps can be easily created with these data obtained through traditional marketing research (surveys, focus group interviews, etc.), the time-consuming and directive nature of these methods often does not accurately reflect brand positions on the map. The beginning of digital transformation in businesses has brought some innovations in the field of e-commerce, and has led the consumer to play an active role in these environments. In this way, there has been an accumulation in the number of comments made by consumers about products and brands on online platforms. The opinions expressed by consumers on the product or service experience on online platforms have become an important resource for both businesses and other consumers. In this study, perception maps are created based on the view that consumer comments on e-commerce sites are valuable sources of information. Comments collected from e-commerce sites about global brands in the mobile phone industry were examined with idea mining techniques, including text mining. Essentially, the study presents a method that combines ideas mining and perception maps techniques. In the study, among the brands whose consumer comments were examined, Huawei was perceived at a positive level in terms of many features, while it was concluded that iPhone was perceived at a poor level compared to its competitors, except for sound and processor features. Xiaomi is positive in camera, performance, display characteristics; It was perceived negatively in terms of sound, price and design features. While the Oppo brand phone model stands out with its price and performance among other features, it has had opinions that it gives bad performance in terms of camera feature. Finally, the General Mobile brand phone model is close to the average in the consumer mind for all features, but is positioned at an insufficient point compared to its competitors. The result obtained from the customer comments examined by the idea mining (Emotion Analysis) method shows that this technique used in perception maps can give an accurate result for companies to make new positioning decisions and develop effective marketing strategies.