Target group profile and association map: marketing profile versus associative profile

Your target group profile shows who your customers are, where they look for information and what they need, yet not why one person chooses and another drops out. You are probably missing a second profile. A marketing profile describes who the target group is; an associative profile describes how that group gives meaning to the choice.

A target group profile is a compact summary of evidence-based insights about a target group. The marketing profile it contains describes characteristics, behaviour and needs: who the target group is. An association map shows the associative profile: which associations a target group shares within a specific choice context, with what valence, strength and salience.

You often need both maps: the target group profile to decide whom you reach and where, the association map to understand what the choice means to them. Confusing them leads to conclusions that neither map supports.

The articles on the marketing target group, the associative target group and the difference between the two focus on how you define a group of people. This article is about the documents in which you then describe that target group: the target group profile and the association map.

The distinction lies in the question each profile answers. A marketing profile answers who the target group is. An associative profile answers how the target group gives meaning to a particular choice. Both terms are Neurofactor working definitions. They build on scientific traditions, but together they do not form a validated model.

The marketing profile comes from the tradition of market segmentation. In 1956, Wendell Smith described segmentation as a strategy in which you view a heterogeneous market as a number of smaller, more homogeneous markets with differing preferences (Smith, 1956). Wedel and Kamakura later set out the bases and methods of segmentation in detail, from demographic and lifestyle characteristics to response-based and statistical models (Wedel & Kamakura, 2000).

A marketing profile therefore mainly describes observable or reportable characteristics:

• Who: demographics, job role, career stage and decision-making authority.
• Where: information channels and the channels in which people decide or buy.
• What they need: needs, goals, pain points and objections.
• How they buy: purchasing behaviour, frequency and order value, if transaction data are available.

The target group profile records this compactly: in the Neurofactor working definition, a compact summary of evidence-based target group insights with traceable sources and uncertainties, not a replacement for the research file.

Many organisations summarise a marketing profile as a persona: a fictional person who represents a user or customer segment. Reviewing fifteen years of research, Salminen and colleagues point to well-known risks: manually created personas often do not rest on rigorous empirical data, they become outdated when behaviour changes and they can reinforce stereotypes (Salminen et al., 2021). Chapman and Milham argue that it is difficult to determine how many users a persona actually represents, which makes a persona hard to test (Chapman & Milham, 2006).

A target group profile is not a persona: it states sources and uncertainties instead of an invented life story. And even a good persona remains a marketing profile. It tells you who someone is, not what a choice means to that person.

The associative profile rests on the idea that knowledge in memory is organised as a network. Keller described brand knowledge with an associative network model: nodes of information, connected by links that vary in strength. The stronger a link, the more likely it is that activating one node brings the other to mind. Keller bases this spreading activation partly on Collins and Loftus (Keller, 1993; Collins & Loftus, 1975). He also describes brand associations in terms of their favourability, strength and uniqueness.

Neurofactor applies this logic to a choice rather than only to a brand. For each choice context, an associative profile describes:

• Which associations people connect with the choice, in their own words.
• Valence: whether an association is positive, negative or ambivalent.
• Strength: how firmly the association is connected to the choice.
• Salience: how quickly the association comes to mind when the choice arises.
• Sharedness: whether an association is shared by a group or occurs only among a few people.

The choice context is essential. 'City break' evokes different associations than 'booking an organised city break instead of planning it yourself'. For collecting and measuring associations, see How do you measure associations?.

An association map is the representation of the associative profile: the network of shared associations around a choice. A related research method is the brand concept map by John and colleagues. Consumers draw individual association networks, which researchers combine into one consensus map. That map shows the core associations, which associations are linked directly and which indirectly to the brand, and which ones form a group together (John et al., 2006).

A Neurofactor association map shows comparable elements around a choice: the core associations, their valence, strength and salience, and the links between them. Groups of related associations are called association clusters.

Clustering associations is not the same as dividing people into groups. A 'certainty' cluster on the map does not mean that a group of people chooses mainly for certainty; that needs separate testing.

Start with the same choice and keep its definition identical in both maps.

Then cross them: for each marketing segment, look at which associative patterns occur. Often one demographic segment contains several patterns, while people from different segments share the same pattern. This only works if you measured associations and characteristics among the same respondents. Otherwise it remains an assumption.

The target group profile determines whom you reach, through which channels and with which offer. The association map determines which meanings your message needs to connect with, strengthen or correct. For translating the target group profile into a communication strategy, see From target group profile to communication strategy.

• Mainly a target group profile for media planning, channel choice, reach, prioritising customer groups and product decisions based on needs.
• Mainly an association map when you want to understand why people with similar characteristics choose differently, for positioning, naming and message development, and for an offer that meets needs well but is still not chosen.
• Both when introducing a new offer or a campaign that needs to change an established choice.

A practical test: can you phrase the problem as 'we are reaching the wrong people'? Then start with the target group profile. Does it sound like 'the right people see it, but it means nothing to them'? Then start with the association map.

1. Define the choice context. Describe the decision as concretely as possible, including the alternatives.
2. Draw up the marketing profile. Gather characteristics, channels, needs and behaviour, and record the source of each statement.
3. Collect associations. Ask for spontaneous associations within the same choice context, recording valence, strength and salience.
4. Draw the association map. Map shared associations and their links, and mark what is uncertain.
5. Cross both profiles. Check which associative patterns occur in which segments, among the same respondents.
6. Test decision relevance. Examine whether patterns are related to the choice itself before you build a message on them.
7. Keep both maps up to date. See When and how should you update a target group profile?.

This example is fictional. The content is illustrative and not a research finding.

Situation. A travel company wants to develop a new range of organised city breaks: transport, hotel and a few guided activities in one package.

Choice question. Why do people choose such a package, or book everything themselves instead?

Available information. The target group profile describes couples aged between 30 and 55 who book online, look for information on social media and comparison sites and want convenience.

Suitable approach. The company collects associations from people matching this profile, within the choice 'organised package or planning it yourself'. An association map might show:

Possible interpretation. The same marketing profile may contain two patterns: one that links the package with being carefree, and one that links it with a group tour. Age and channel use do not explain that difference.

Next step. The company tests whether the patterns occur more widely and are related to the choice, and then tests messages that emphasise freedom within the package.

• Demographics as an explanation of meaning. 'Couples aged 30 to 55 find a package carefree' is an associative statement about a marketing segment. Unmeasured among those people, it is an assumption.
• Reading a cluster as a target group. A cluster of associations is not a group of people. If you turn it into a persona, you invent a segment.
• Associations without a choice context. General associations with a brand or category say little about a specific decision.
• A word list as an association map. Without valence, strength and salience, you cannot see which associations matter. Frequently mentioned is not the same as important.
• Both profiles in one document without provenance. If it is not visible what was measured and what was assumed, the map loses its value.
• Equating shared associations with identical behaviour. Shared associations make a choice easier to understand, but without additional evidence they do not predict behaviour.

A target group profile and an association map describe the same target group from a different question. The marketing profile shows who the target group is and where you reach it. The associative profile shows what the choice means to that target group. Use them together, with the same choice context and traceable sources, and only draw conclusions that the map in question actually supports.