The information gathered is entirely determined by the stakeholder group, therefore change agent, facilitator or researcher influence or bias is minimised or eliminated.

The ultimate aim of stakeholder opinion gathering is normally to arrive at thematic clusters or concepts that outline the territories that need to be considered or addressed. Conceptualisation is a process of articulating ideas, thoughts, perceptions, feelings and needs and representing these in an explicit form.

Any project that entails strategy planning and assessment is dependent on clear and realistic market, stakeholder and situation understanding. It is however the gathering of meaningful, reliable and valid information, feedback and insight from the market and stakeholders that often is complex and problematic

Much of this complexity is that we need to accommodate and account for stakeholders' claim, stake or vested interest in the issue at hand, or in an organisation, or in their relationship with a product or brand. It is through the information gathering method and in the quality of the resultant information that this complex task can be assisted and simplified. A large part of information gathering is about the opinions and perceptions that stakeholders have.

The ultimate aim of stakeholder opinion gathering is normally to arrive at thematic clusters or concepts that outline the territories that need to be considered or addressed. Conceptualisation is a process of articulating ideas, thoughts, perceptions, feelings and needs and representing these in an explicit form.

As part of the information gathering methods, a variety of facilitated concept mapping and diagramming processes are used, often aided by visual expressions using many of the available software packages. The majority of these are 'free form' in nature, and are the result of facilitated and informal idea capturing processes. They are however not always a reliable representation of a wider market or population (if that be the intention), nor can one be certain that valid inferences can be made from the captured information.

Even so, concepts are social constructions and the capturing of such constructions is well served by a form of concept mapping that facilitates the articulation of the ideas, thoughts, feelings, needs and perceptions of groups, BUT with the beneficial end result being an objective and aggregate representation of these.

The Concept Mapping process provides this benefit. It is a formal, structured process aided and augmented by statistical analysis of people's statements about the issue under observation. The end result is an aggregate of the group input in the form of themes or clusters that delineate the situation, issue or concept under scrutiny.

The following key aspects define the process:

• Every process captures the unique output from a group of individuals who contribute to the process with their own experiences, jargon, perceptions and motivations.
• It encourages the group to remain focussed and facilitates group cohesiveness and morale, especially important and beneficial when working with diverse, opposing stakeholder members and groups.
• The information gathered is entirely determined by the stakeholder group, therefore change agent, facilitator or researcher influence or bias is minimised or eliminated.
• It uses original, intact respondent statements as units of analysis.
• It yields interpretable, evocative conceptual maps that have stimulating and creative value, especially useful for innovation and development.
• Enables data structure to emerge through the use of multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis.
  • Statements or text based responses are sorted into main clusters that delineate how the statements are related to each other, and what the main regions or territories of the concept are
  • The statements are rated in terms of a relevant scale of measurement resulting in an aggregate rating of each cluster. This is an important dimension since the output not only reflects what is, but also how it is perceived relative to importance or priority, or effort associated with it

The format and quality of the results or outputs have wide and deep application potential, namely:

1. It conceptually and visually delivers a framework for planning and evaluation purposes.
2. The final map/s can be used for structuring subsequent planning efforts into the themes, regions or territories, and clusters as outlined by the map/s.
3. The map can serve as an outline for reporting.
4. The map can act as an organising device for programme operationalisation and implementation.
5. From an evaluation perspective, the map can facilitate measurement development, i.e. clusters can serve as measurement constructs and individual statements can guide the delineation of specific measures.