Illustration of a buyer behavior flow chart

Consider Burger King.

The market is restaurants and we will focus on fast food since neither casual dining or fine dining is a real substitute for fast food.

Burger King uses an undifferentiated market coverage strategy, going after the whole fast food market with one brand. Thus there is one target market for Burger King: the whole fast food market.

This target market has many needs and wants, including ingredient quality, preparation style, preparation quality, service style, service quality, menu depth, menu variety, price, atmosphere, cleanliness, amenities (e.g., play area), promotions, meal coverage, convenience, no smoking policy and satisfaction guarantees. For consumers in this target market we want to know how they go about choosing among different brands of fast food.

The goal is to position Burger King in the mind of consumers. To do that we can create a Buyer Behavior Flow Chart that depicts the decision process in a way that shows the more important evaluative dimensions at the top and the ones that any one brand can use to distinguish themselves from their main competitors at the bottom.

What this shows is that consumers first think about what type of fast food they want, then the price range (restricted because the market is fast food) and both of these evaluative dimensions are very important to consumers. But they do nothing to separate Burger King from McDonald's or Wendys. Indeed, today the lower evaluative dimensions—the ones that can potentially be used for positioning—are also not much use for product differentiation. (Recall that Burger King's best positioning and slogan was "Have it your way" when McDonald's could not customize burgers.)

Only the last evaluative dimension has the potential to successfully position Burger King.

This positioning map shows two markets (denoted by the preference circles) and four brand perceptions. The market for what might seem to be an inferior product has more preferences since any two-dimensional positioning map has other dimensions missing. For example, McDonald's appeals to families with kids (Happy Meals).

This illustration is necessarily simplified. For a complete example of a Buyer Behavior Flow Chart see the cases under Problem Solving Format.

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