Identifying and establishing brand positioning

Basic concepts
Brand positioning is a procedure where the image of a brand is put into customers’
minds in such a way that it differentiates and value is perceived. Positioning refers to
putting a product or service in a place in customer’s mind so that they perceive it the
way the firm wants them to. This could be elaborated with the help of an example:
Bareeze is positioned in a way that customers perceive it to be a high end and high
quality brand for women clothing.
In order to position we need to consider our target market, competitors, points that are
similar to and different from our competitors. We have discussed the following
below:
Target market
It is important to find our target market as different people have different needs. For
example a person who likes to go to northern Pakistan for trip might be more
interested in buying a land cruiser than a person who travels in plains. Market consists
of all the potential buyers of a product whereas segmentation is a process of dividing
this group on the basis of their interests. It requires a tradeoff between cost and
benefits and this segmentation need to be done finely in order to meet the needs of its
customers. Such as, in Pakistan, an ad related to surf excel would filter down the
market to women, then further tune it down to the age bracket of 20 plus and the
women with occupation of a housewife.
Segmentation bases
These can be classified as descriptive or customer oriented, for example, the pattern
of tea consumption, or as behavioral or product oriented, for example, what the
segment thinks of tapal as a brand.
Behavioral segmentation is important for marketing, for example if we take colgate as
an example, people seek the good flavor, cleanliness and whiteness of teeth and so on.
We can use one or more segments while marketing a product as given in the example
above, bareeze could either use high income group as a segment only, by choosing
demographics, or it can use segmentation in terms of behavior too, like the users
status.
In order to build brand, marketers want to know about the percentage of target market
present as well as factors facilitating the step-by-step transition. They might need to
raise brand salience in order to convince the customers to try the brand again.
Customers can be segmented on their behavior Mcdonalds introducing spicy burger
with the tagline daring the customers to try it, the ones who can handle the spice level.
Similarly, demographics can play an important role too for example maggi noodles
might specifically be liked by kids aged between 8 - 16. The main advantage of
demographics is that its easier to buy traditional media on that basis, however, this
advantage now has lower impact. For example websites are created now to reach
customers living in far-flung areas who can now order products through websites.