Position maps of Marketing, also known as gap maps or perception maps, and the idea of positioning in general, could be regarded as metaphors in several ways. 

First of all, whichever approach is used to create maps may cannot be 100% accurate, valid, relevant, or precise. The human perception of the world is dominated by knowledge claims that are mostly assumptions. In reality, peeling the surface of an orange cannot result in a flat surface. Likewise, the Earth, as a globe, cannot be accurately drawn on a flat surface. Metaphorically, in market positioning, gap maps ('position maps' or ''perception maps) are used to show consumers’ perceptions of specific corporate images. In fact, both primary and secondary data drawn from market research to create perception maps are not entirely trustworthy. Just as maps are used as navigation guidance in the real world, gap maps provide insights into the unfilled spots in each target market that can provide room for more innovation. In this way, businesses can position their products with an analysis of their greatest competencies based on the public demand, and, most significantly, the ways that individual customers perceive the corporate image. However, position maps are inherently flawed, since accurate data cannot be readily acquired through primary research (e.g. questionnaires, observations and experimentations) or secondary research (that are less reliable in terms of relevance to the specific market and corporation).

Secondly, emotions, as another way of knowing, penetrate different interpretations of differentiation in map production. Education, for instance, plays an important role in creating discordant cultural and political viewpoints. A Mercator’s map, for instance, enlarges the size of Europe because it was produced by Europeans. As another example, the Greenwich Mean Time, designed by the British, is based on the time from a village in London called Greenwich. In fact, squeezing all of the contents on a small sheet of paper means truncation of different aspects including geography, politics, topography and so forth. Similarly, in business and management, perception maps tend to have bias that is resulted both consciously and unconsciously. Doing a survey with a focus group in a niche market using stratified sampling, for instance, can make the results very narrow. A general social trend may not be drawn objectively, because the position maps here are fairly based on existing socio-economics status, demographics or geographical aspects of the customers.

Indeed, maps can be considered as a metaphor of positioning in Business and Management. To what extent maps can serve the purpose may be open to open contention.