Market mapping

Dividing a market into groups of customers with similar needs.

Location, demographics, lifestyle, income and age.

The segment a business aims its product and marketing at.

Better meets needs, targeted marketing, spots gaps, or higher sales.

The map has two lines crossing in the middle, each showing a feature customers care about - for example low to high price, and low to high quality.

Each business or product is placed on the map according to how customers see it on both features.

The axes split the map into four areas, such as high price and high quality, or low price and low quality.

To see where competitors are crowded together, and where there is space that nobody is filling.

Two businesses sit in the low price, less healthy corner, so competition there is strong - a new business there would have to fight for customers.

The low price, healthy corner is empty. No business is meeting the needs of customers who want healthy food they can afford.

The Salad Room and Juice & Co are the closest to the gap, so they are the rivals a new business would need to beat.

Before opening, the entrepreneur must research whether enough customers actually want cheap healthy food - and whether it can be made cheaply enough to make a profit.

Nobody may want a product in that part of the map - for example very expensive, very low-quality food.

It may be impossible to make the product cheaply enough to sell at that price and still make a profit.

Businesses may have filled the gap before and failed.

Use market research to check there are enough customers who want the product before spending money.