Who Is Winning The Market Game? Market Importance-Performance Analysis As A New Approach For Multi-Product Market Research

This study introduces Market Importance-Performance Analysis (MIPA), a new comparative analysis approach that extends traditional Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) to analyze multiple competing products simultaneously. We propose two standardized metrics—Market Standardized Performance (MSP) and Market Standardized Importance (MSI) scores—that compare products across attributes relative to market trends and heterogeneity. We also develop a novel visualization and interpretation framework leveraging MIPA matrices that enables intuitive understanding of product or service market positions and competitive advantages. We validate MIPA through a case study of the social media communication platforms market (N = 614), which reveals four distinct market positions: Performance Maximizers (e.g., Facebook Messenger), Default Market Products (e.g., Instagram), Successful Differentiators (e.g., Signal), and Underperformers (e.g., Twitter). The results demonstrate how MIPA effectively identifies competitive advantages, market positioning, and differentiation strategies. Our method maintains consistent interpretations across measurement scales and contexts while providing clear mathematical interpretations and intuitive visualizations through MIPA matrices and radar plots. We discuss limitations regarding the static nature of analysis and data collection methods, and propose future research directions incorporating digital data sources.