Research Tips
Cognitive Mapping
Market researchers spend a lot of time trying to understand what people think about brands, companies, products, and so forth. This can be challenging since people sometimes have difficulty articulating what they think. Cognitive mapping is a set of techniques that can be useful for exposing people’s thoughts. One book on the topic describes five mapping techniques researchers can employ1:
- Maps that assess attention, association, and importance of concepts.
- Maps that show dimensions of categories and cognitive taxonomies.
- Maps that show influence, causality, and system dynamics.
- Maps that show the structure of argument and conclusion.
- Maps that specify schemes, frames, and perceptual codes.
1 Huff, A. S. (1990), Mapping Strategic Thought, John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, UK.