MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCALING & CONJOINT ANALYSIS:
Multidimensional scaling (MDS) is a class of procedures for representing perceptions and preferences
of respondents spatially by means of a visual display: Perceived or psychological relationships among
stimuli are represented as geometric relationships among points in a multidimensional space. These
geometric representations are often called spatial maps. => use for positioning!!!
MDS has been used in marketing to identify:
1. The number and nature of dimensions consumers use to perceive different brands in the marketplace
2. The positioning of current brands on these dimensions
3. The positioning of consumers’ ideal brand on these dimensions
Information provided by MDS has been used for a variety of marketing applications: Image
measurement, Market segmentation, New product development, Assessing advertising effectiveness,
Pricing analysis, chanel decisions, Attitude scale construction.
The important statistics and terms associated with MDS:
Similarity judgments. Similarity judgments are ratings on all possible pairs of brands or other stimuli in
terms of their similarity using a Likert-type scale.
Preference rankings. Preference rankings are rank orderings of the brands or other stimuli from the
most preferred to the least preferred. They are normally obtained from the respondents.
Stress. This is a lack-of-fit measure; higher values of stress indicate poorer fits.
R-square. R-square is a squared correlation index that indicates the proportion of variance of the
optimally scaled data that can be accounted for by the MDS procedure. This is a goodness-of-fit
measure.
Spatial map. Perceived relationships among brands or other stimuli are represented as geometric
relationships among points in a multidimensional space.
Coordinates. Coordinates indicate the positioning of a brand or a stimulus in a spatial map.
Unfolding. The representation of both brands and respondents as points in the same space is referred to
as unfolding.
