Module 2 discussion

The sharing economy in the ride sharing market specifically has had large impacts on the economic value of public transportation.  Uber being the pioneer in the market really was able to revolutionize privatized public transportation.  This has allowed for any person who is able to get and hold a driver's license and good driving record to become a driver for a company, but allow for the driver to make a decent living.  This has been nice since it is less restrictive than being a taxi driver, especially in bigger cities like New York where you need a medallion to be able to drive a cab and there is a quota restriction on the medallions.  This has also had major environmental impacts by allowing those who were opposed to traditional cabs but lived too far from their jobs to be able to walk or bike another option.  This means that more people can commute with ride-sharing and thus don't need to own vehicles themselves, or at least not have to operate them nearly as frequently, reducing emissions and vehicles on the roads.  The social effects have been vast as well from celebrity endorsements to personal social media marketing from drivers and those who want to make Uber bigger themselves.

Using a perceptual map allows you to graph and categorize consumer opinions of your product or service.  This allows you to narrow down what part of your business will actually have the greatest effect on your overall profitability from your marketing.  As we look to the markets for beer and cars as the article example, we can see that Budweiser is the top of the market for sales volume while being a pretty common beer as far as its differentiation from other beers.  It is however very representative of the whole market with its high centrality.  The most distinctive beer in the market is Guinness which captures a particular niche in the market and thus does not have the sales volume of the more traditional beers like Budweiser, Coors, and Miller.
The Car market has a significantly more spread out dispersion on the diagram, however there is a cluster of the big 4 brand dealers that are all very similar in their place in the market.  Those 4 brands are Toyota, Honda, Ford, and Chevy.  The more distinctive brands like Porsche, Jaguar, Mercedes, and BMW capture their own particular portion of the market and really only compete among themselves and are separate from the rest of the more conventional market.  

To be able to re-position yourself into a different quadrant of the C-D map can be an extremely pricey venture as it generally is a result of a new product line or completely new marketing.  A product or service in the market would want to be almost as close to the Distinctiveness line as possible and be a heavily central brand representative to make the most of their sales volume and be marketable to the largest client base.  A C-D Map is extremely useful to graph a market before a newcomer would attempt to enter the market to see where they may fit into the larger market economy.  If a company were to attempt to enter a market that is already flush with competition to where they are unable to find their spot or opportunity in the market, it may be best for them to change their marketing strategy or even try to enter into a different product market.

In the group project, I believe I will use the C-D mapping to foretell of the market as it exists before entering into the market so as to ensure we are able to have a successful entrance into the market.  I feel like the more that we can make our group a representative of the overall market while being judt distinctive enough to set ourselves apart from the rest of the market will ensure we have the greatest profitability possible in the long run.