Understanding Mekko Charts: A Comprehensive Guide for your Data Storytelling

The Component Comparison and its different alternatives

As we discussed in the essential article on Component Comparison, it represents a situation. You need to show an item as a mix of two or more elements. The usual words used with it are: % of Total, Share of, Mix of, Component of, Includes X. You can find it in the world around you every day. Last week, we talked about the 100% Area Chart. Today, we take a look at Mekko Charts.

Mekko Chart – Born in the land of “Father Xmas”

The Mekko chart is also known as the Marimekko chart or mosaic plot. It was developed in the late 1960s by Finnish economist and statistician Arvo A. Aho. He wanted to find a way to visualize complex market segmentation. He sought a method to display market shares across two categorical dimensions. This method would provide insight into the size and distribution of segments in a single, comprehensive chart.

Mekko charts take inspiration from the bold, blocky patterns of Marimekko textiles from Finland. They use varying widths and heights of rectangles to represent proportions. These charts also show relationships between categories.

Practical Examples from the Corporate World

Mekko charts gained traction throughout the business world. They gained popularity, particularly in consulting, market analysis, and financial reporting. This was because companies needed a way to efficiently compare multiple market segments or product lines. They compared these across regions, customers, or other key attributes.

👉🏻 Advantages

Visualizes Two Variables Simultaneously: Mekko charts embed both the size (width) and distribution (height) of segments. This allows users to analyze relationships across two categorical dimensions in a single view.
Integrated Part-to-Whole and Comparison View: It shows part-to-whole relationships. It also enables easy comparison between groups and categories. This is done without flipping through multiple charts.
Highlights Market Segmentation and Growth: Especially valuable for visualizing market share, product mix, competitive analysis, and resource allocation across segments.
Efficient Communication: All key information is consolidated in one chart, making presentations and meetings more focused and memorable.
Supports Strategic Decision-Making: Used extensively in consulting and finance to identify profitable segments, untapped opportunities, and competitive positioning.
Customizable and Engaging: Its block-style layout is visually distinctive. It can catch the audience’s attention. This feature makes the data easier to remember and discuss.
Immediate Insights: The area of the rectangles provides a direct sense of absolute and relative importance for each segment

👉🏻 Disadvantages

Complexity and Potential Clutter: It can become visually overwhelming with too many categories or segments. This makes it hard to accurately read individual values.
Learning Curve: Requires explanation and practice for users unfamiliar with interpreting both width and height at once.
Imprecise for Many Small Segments: Difficulty in distinguishing or comparing small segments without clear labeling or interaction.
Not Suited for Continuous or Time Series Data: Mekko charts work best for categorical variables. They are not suitable for trends over time or continuous measures.
Challenging for Absolute Value Comparisons: The primary goal may be to compare actual totals rather than proportions. Simpler bar or column charts may be preferable in this case.
Negative Values Not Supported: Mekko charts generally cannot display negative values.
Time-Consuming Creation: More effort required to set up, especially for large or complex datasets

Practical Tips to Reduce the Disadvantages

There are always creative ways to help yourself avoid the pitfalls, depending again on the story you choose to tell. Not every piece of data is essential, and not everything needs to be visible or communicated. I have added some tips I’ve learned during my professional journey on the right side of the image below.

Are there other alternatives?

Of course, in the future post I am going to talk about:

Tree maps
Sankey Charts and others

Summary

The Mekko chart is a sophisticated, multidimensional visualization tool designed to efficiently compare multiple categorical dimensions for businesses and analysts. Its main strengths are its ability to visualize both part-to-whole relationships and comparative relationships simultaneously. This makes nuanced patterns and opportunities easy to spot. Mekko charts are particularly valuable for strategic planning, market analysis, resource allocation, and gaining competitive insights.

However, they should be used with care. They can become cluttered and hard to interpret if there are too many categories. They are less useful for trend or time-based data. They also require a degree of audience education. The Mekko chart is invaluable for providing clear overviews of data with two categorical variables. The data needs to be well-organized, and the number of groups should be manageable.

There is always a chart for your story. You need to understand the basic concepts, principles, and language used. This helps you choose what you need to persuade, inform, inspire, or entertain correctly.

For a free downloadable resource, click the Chart Decision Tree and Compare Visual Guide.

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