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Attribute Mapping Guide
ATTRIBUTE MAPPING
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Overview - the attribute map framework
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n attribute map describes your offering in terms of what it does to please, or displease, key customer segments. Along the rows are the reactions of a target customer segment to the features in your product or service. The top row shows those features and attributes that customers regard positively: these attributes might prompt them to purchase and stay loyal to you. The features in the second row are the negatives; these are things that customer dislike and would prefer to do without. In the third row are attributes about which customers are neutral. They don’t care, or don’t know, about these features.
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Basic positive features are what we call non-negotiable. You may be spending enormous amounts of resources to deliver them, but they don’t offer a competitive advantage. Think of safety in airlines or cleanliness in hotel rooms. Differentiators distinguish your offering from the competition in a positive way. This could be your brand or even just habit. Tide may not be measurably better than other detergents, but if you’ve always bought it, you may continue to do so. Exciter features are those rare attributes that generate an overwhelming, game-changing, positive response. Apple historically has been great at coming up with these.
2023
ATTRIBUTE MAPPING
On the negative side, tolerables are things we put up with, often because we have no choice. Lack of privacy for access to Internet software is an example. Dissatisfiers give customers a reason to defect, because a competitor has shown that they can do without the tolerables – customers cutting the cord on landline phones and cable TV services are examples. Enragers are features that have such a strong emotional response on the part of the customer that if they can avoid them in any way, they will. For many young people, the green text bubbles associated with Android devices that pop up in iMessages on their iPhones is such a feature – it leads them to demand iPhones or be socially ostracized. Neutral features are generally things that customers don’t care about or don’t know about. If they are “so what’s” you might consider getting rid of them altogether. Parallel differentiators make a difference to the customer experience, but not necessarily via the main functionality your offering is supposed to deliver. Best Buy’s recognition that they aren’t just selling technology, but rather the experience of benefiting from what technology can do and building its value proposition accordingly is a case in point.
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Dynamics of positive attributes - exciters to non-negotiables The introduction of a new feature or set of features that is perceived by enough customers as exciting can change the competitive dynamics of an entire category. For example, when Fidelity Personal Investment figured out how to offer several of their managed funds with no fees, that proved incredibly exciting to a certain class of younger investors, who didn’t have enough wealth built up yet to afford the big leagues, but who were interested in investing. The introduction of this offering proved devastating to established incumbent asset managers who made their money on exactly the fees Fidelity was planning to eliminate. Technology products, of course, often live and die by the level of excitement that they generate when they are first introduced to customers. Apple’s iconic iPhone, that combined a supercomputer with an Internet access point with a camera, with text capability and – oh yes, it could also make phone calls – is a classic example. For small businesses, cloud-based services such as Hubspot and Constant comment allowed them to take advantage of powerful technologies which had only been the province of major corporations previously.
2023
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2023