Management Practice Inc. (MPI) has recently focused on a marketing technique known as "mapping" in order to help answer three key issues in the publishing industry. The technique can be equally well applied to many other industries.

Trade and mass market publishers are increasingly interested in their end market the readers, as well as their immediate customers - the bookstores. A key technique is mapping, which enables publishers to obtain a geographic profile of where their customers live, work, shop, etc., and how that pattern will change in the future.

We have found mapping to be helpful in answering three key issues:

1. Where To Distribute - Distribution decisions are typically made on the basis of past shipments, estimates of future orders by local sales representatives, and the business managers' intuition. They are not often based on market potential. As a result, past misjudgments as manifested in excessive shipping, handling,and inventory write-offs are corrected slowly and at substantial cost.

Maps of market potential can be drawn for any level of geography. Summaries for the entire U.S. are useful for strategic and investment decisions. More detailed maps, such as the one shown on the following page for Philadelphia, are useful for determining where and how products should be distributed. This is an all important decision for publishers since they sell on "consignment" and have as much as 50 percent of their shipments returned.

2. How To Promote? Publishers decide where and how to promote a particular book by evaluating past shipments, by seeking a regional balance, and as a result of negotiations with chains and local retailers. Mapping adds the prospect of focusing advertising on local market potential.

Publishers spend increasing amounts on point-of-sale, display, and promotional tours. These are supported by spot television, radio, and newspaper advertising. Mapping makes these decisions more cost-effective.

3. How To Improve Sales Force Effectiveness - The cost of keeping sales representatives in the field continues to grow. This, combined with the difficulty of measuring success, has made the process of setting sales and mix quotas more important. Mapping can be used to aggregate the potential for a particular portfolio of books, for an imprint, or for a publisher's entire library. Such a target can then be used as a component of an individual sales representative's goal.

Mapping can also be used to profile the sales potential of a particular location. The systems can use longitude and latitude to position a retail outlet, define a shopping area, and summarize the likely demand for an individual store. For example, the circles on the map above show a 7-mile radius from each retail book store location, thus making it possible to assess market potential.

The relatively small cost of mapping is more than justified by the benefits gained.