Non-Market Value Map

Some groups never buy from you but can stop you: a municipality that grants permits, a regulator, a neighborhood, an NGO, the local press. This page ranks them, writes down what they count as value and where their red lines are, and turns the most dangerous gap into one action.

Research, mixed: nonmarket strategy (Baron, 1995) and stakeholder salience (Mitchell, Agle & Wood, 1997) are influential, and studies find positive links between this kind of activity and firm results, but those are associations, not proof that your effort will pay back. The scales, the strategy mix and the budget check on this page are practice and rules of thumb.

Use it when:

• Your plans depend on a permit, a license, a public contract or a rule that is being rewritten.
• A community group, union, NGO or journalist has started asking questions about what you do.
• You are entering a new town, country or sector and do not yet know who can say no.

Skip it when:

• You need to weigh one specific action against its reputation risk: use 6.18 Reputation Risk vs Value Grid.
• The people who matter sit inside your own organization: use 3.1 Stakeholder Map.

A firm competes in two arenas. In the market, customers pay. In the nonmarket arena, governments, regulators, media and communities decide what the firm is allowed to do and whether it is seen as legitimate. Baron (1995) argued that the two should be planned together, not as a business plan with press releases added afterward. Stakeholder theory gives the mapping rule: a group counts because it has a stake in what you do, not because it sends you an invoice (Freeman, 2010). Since attention is scarce, rank groups by salience: how much power they have over you, how legitimate their claim is, and how urgent it is to them (Mitchell, Agle & Wood, 1997).

The limit is the evidence on payoff, which is mixed. The defensible case is about risk: these groups can delay, block or discredit you, so knowing what they value is worth it even if it never shows up as revenue. A quiet group is not the same as a satisfied one.

List up to four groups outside the market. Rate each attribute High, Medium or Low. The more attributes a group holds at High, the more attention it needs (rule of thumb).

Strong answer: names a specific body and why its power is real: "Municipal building committee: power High (decides our extension permit), legitimacy High (elected), urgency Medium (decision next spring); relationship neutral." Not: "Government: important."

Illustrative example: the business is made up.

A family-owned sawmill in a small Swedish town wants to double its drying capacity. Section 1 lists the municipal building committee (power, legitimacy High; urgency Medium), the residents' association on the access road (power Medium, legitimacy and urgency High, relationship hostile since a noisy winter), and the regional environmental authority (power High, relationship neutral).

Section 2 shows that the residents judge the mill on two things only: truck traffic past the school in the morning and noise at night. Their red line is a second winter like the last one. Section 3 reveals that the mill delivers full permit compliance but no contact person and no warning before night shifts; residents' satisfaction is Low.

Section 4: the mill uses compliance and an annual report, nothing else. The chosen action is to agree a truck window with the residents before the permit application, owned by the site manager, with a meeting in four weeks. The question to check the gap: "What would make next winter acceptable to you?"