How TURF Analysis Maximizes Market Reach with Minimal Resources

1. TURF – Problems It Can Solve

We often want to cover as many market users as possible with minimal resources. Scenarios include: a newly launched product needing awareness without knowing which media channels to use; a brand evaluating channel reach after integrated marketing; and deciding whether a new product will increase overall market share. TURF analysis can address these.

2. Introduction to TURF Analysis

TURF (Totally Unduplicated Reach and Frequency) analysis, also called cumulative unduplicated reach and frequency analysis, is a method for studying how to combine resources to achieve maximum market coverage. It focuses on “cumulative” and “unduplicated” values.

Example: a company has product A (50% market share) and product B (30%). Because some users use both, the total is not simply 80% but 50% + 30% – 10% = 70% after de‑duplication.

3. TURF Analysis Principles

TURF calculates the unduplicated cumulative reach for all possible combinations of alternatives to find the combination that covers the most users.

Case 1: Choosing Media Channel Combinations

A company launches a new product and runs an integrated marketing campaign across several channels. Survey data (illustrated in the figure) shows Weibos reaches the most users, followed by WeChat Moments and Official Account. The question is whether the Weibos + WeChat combination yields the highest coverage.

Using TURF, the optimal two‑channel combination is Weibos + short‑video app (85% unduplicated reach), not Weibos + WeChat Moments (78%). This is because Weibos and WeChat overlap heavily, while Weibos and short‑video have lower overlap.

Extending the analysis to three‑ and four‑channel combinations shows that Weibos + short‑video app + field promotion reaches 95% of users, outperforming other combos. When budget is reduced, the least effective channels (WeChat Official Account and Moments) can be dropped.

Case 2: Selecting Product Combinations to Expand User Base

Applying TURF to product portfolios helps determine which product addition maximizes total user share while minimizing cannibalization. Suppose product A has 50% share, and the company considers product B (20% potential) or product C (30% potential). TURF estimates:

Product B: 50% + 20% – 5% = 65% (15% incremental)

Product C: 50% + 30% – 20% = 60% (10% incremental)

Thus product B contributes a larger incremental share.

4. TURF Analysis Operation Method (Using SPSS)

For researchers and practitioners comfortable with hands‑on analysis, TURF can be performed in SPSS 22.0 or later.

Navigate to Analyze → Descriptive Statistics → TURF.

Select all items to be analyzed (e.g., media channel options).

Set “Maximum number of combination variables” to the desired number of options.

Set “Number of combinations to display” equal to the maximum.

Enter the positive response value matching the coding of the multiple‑choice question (e.g., 1 for selected, 0 for not selected).

Click “OK” to generate results.

The output table “Best range and frequency by group size” lists each combination (variable) and its “Percent of cases” representing the cumulative unduplicated percentage. For example, a three‑option combination of WeChat Moments + Official Account + e‑commerce platform yields the highest coverage of 78.8%.