Chord Diagram
This chord diagram shows relationships in terms of switching behaviour among phone brands.
The chords are directed: for example, while 12% of respondents who now have a Samsung used to have a Nokia, only 2% have the opposite; 2% now have a Nokia and used to have a Samsung phone.
The thickness of chords between brands encodes the percentage of respondents that switched between two brands: thicker chords represent a higher percentage of respondents that made that switch.
This diagram reveals asymmetries: if a chord is tapered, there are more respondents switching to one brand from the other than vice versa.
Mouse over a brand name to focus on switching behaviour to and from other brands concerning that specific brand.
While almost everyone in the Netherlands has a phone, many consumers switch to a new phone whenever their contract allows it. But what are the reasons for this switch?
The chord diagram is a relatively new and powerful visualization, especially when wanting to show and analyse connections. However, it does require some explanation for those who have never seen one before. We have analysed the connection between the respondent's current and previous phone brand through this chord diagram to explain precisely that.
The chord diagram represents the installed base shares (all phones) of different brands and the switching behaviour of customers between these brands.
The circle is split up into 8 brands with the arc length of each group scaled to the current brand’s market share. The percentages along the outer rim of the chord Diagram give the share-per-brand. This shows that Samsung dominates the installed base with a 41% share, Nokia is a surprising second with 20%, and Apple is third with 13%.
The chords between the arcs visualize the switching behaviour of the respondents between brands in both directions. For example, the big dark blue chord connecting Samsung and Nokia in the lower left section shows the part of respondents that moved from Samsung to Nokia and from Nokia to Samsung. Clearly, the figure shows that Nokia has lost its installed base share to Samsung, as 12% of all respondents that used to own a Nokia now own a Samsung. At the same time, only 2 % of the Nokia owners previously owned a Samsung.
To clarify which brand has been the net gainer, each chord has the colour of the brand that managed to gain more customers from the connected brand than it has lost to this brand. With this in mind, we can immediately see that Apple is a true net gainer; all its chords are 'Apple grey'. Even more so, besides the chord to Samsung, all chords at Apple are extremely thin at the other side, thus Apple has lost virtually no customers to other brands except Samsung.
There are also chords that connect each brand to itself. These ‘hill-like’ chords represent the respondents who did not switch brands, but stayed loyal to their brand.
These examples, used to explain the chord diagram, are but a handful of the interesting facts that can be gained from it. I encourage you to study the chord diagram by yourself to find all insights in can provide and play with the online interactive version.
Finally, this analysis is but a small piece of the total report based on the yearly Global Mobile Consumer Survey that Deloitte performed. Please feel free to contact the team members for more information regarding the complete report and also how you can discuss this with your clients
Survey Deloitte has created the Global Mobile Consumer Survey – an annual snapshot of the mobile consumer, based on insights from more than 30.000 respondents in more than 20 countries. This analysis is based on the Dutch mobile market anno 2013, based on over 2000 respondents from the Netherlands, where this sample is nationally representative. All research has been undertaken via online research. Fieldwork took place between May to June 2013. The questions for this survey were written by Deloitte member firms. The multinational online research program was managed by Ipsos MORI.
Project team Stephen Ward (sponsoring partner), Gagandeep Sethi (Project Manager), Frank Korf (Analytics lead), Arseni Storojev, Nadieh Bremer, Jessica Abad Kelly