Concepts of Product Positioning
By Rupal Jain
As rightly said by Al Ries and Jack Trout (who introduced the concept
of Positioning in the early 1970’s in their series of articles called,
“The Positioning Era” for Advertising Age), “….Positioning is not what
you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the minds of the
prospect”.
It is defined as the
consumer perception of a product or service as compared to its
competitors. “In marketing, Positioning has come to mean the process
by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of
their target market for its product, brand, or organisation. It is the
relative competitive comparison their product occupies in a given
market as perceived by the target market.” – Wikipedia.
It has also explains the terms Re-Positioning and De-Positioning which
states that Re-Positioning involves changing the identity of the
product, relative to the identity of the competitors products, in the
collective minds of the target market; whereas; De-Positioning
involves attempting to change the identity of competing products,
relative to the identity of your product, in the collective minds of
the target market.
As quoted by someone,
“Positioning theory is a new discipline-based school of thought about
the strategic marketing process. It is the study of the governing
laws, principles, strategies, and models of how the consumer’s mind
systematically sorts, ranks, and files concepts in the minds directly
related to the competitors.”
Product Positioning is how the company wants’ its potential buyers to
see the product; for which the company needs to decide its niche
market – taking into consideration its pricing, promotion,
distribution, packaging, location and competitors strategy as well as
the needs, wants, desires of the customers. For example; Mercedes,
BMW, Rolex is positioned as a luxury brand.
Before Positioning the company should carefully analyse and answer
the following questions: -
i. What is my organisational objective?
ii. Where are my target audiences?
iii. How should I reach my target market?
iv. Who should be involved in this process?
v. When is the right time
to launch the product?
It requires a systematic effort; which is elaborated by the Dictionary
through the following process: -
1. Defining the market in which the product or brand will
compete (who the relevant buyers are).
2. Identifying the attributes (also called dimensions) that
define the product “space”.
3. Collecting information from a sample of customers about
their perceptions of each product on the relevant attributes.
4. Determine each products share of mind.
5. Determine each products current location in the product
space.
6. Determine the target market’s preferred combination of
attributes (referred to as an ideal vector).
7. Examine the fit between: -
The position of your
product.
The position of the ideal vector.
8. Position.
Finally, in the words of Mississippi University State Extension
Service; “Positioning is the attempt to control the publics’
perception of a product or service as it relates to competitive
products”.
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