companies to identify the competitor’s physical
product differences regarding its features,
IDENTIFYING POSITIONING
STRATEGIES
According to Kotler, product position is the
way the brand is defined by customers on important
attributes – the place the product occupies in the
consumers’ minds relative to competing product.
Often, customers have limited time to
reevaluate product during their buying decision
moments. Thus, customers mentally assigned a
position to brands. Meaning, customers may arrive
at a certain position of products by illustrating the
ranking of those brands in their minds.
With or without the marketer’s aid, customers
may position brands. Thus, marketers should not
take their chances in letting product positions in the
hands of the customers. Otherwise, the chances of
receiving weal position are likely to happen.
The marketers must plan positions that will
provide their products an exceptional advantage in
the chosen target markets. Also, the marketer
should design marketing tools to establish the
intended brand positions.
THREE BASIC STEPS IN CHOOSING
POSITIONING STRATEGY
STEP 1. Recognizing a set of prospective
competitive advantage wherein companies may
build a position.
Competitive advantage means the
advantage of the company or brand over its
competitors by providing customers with a greater
value such as lower prices or unmatched benefits
that rationalize the competitive advantage.
Specific ways to differentiate product offering from
those of the competition:
1. Through product differentiation—it requires
Undertone positioning may be weak.
Consumers might not notice or remember the
performance, style, design, and attributes.
2. Through service differentiation—the company
should differentiate the services that go with the
product. Companies may look into the following
aspects of studying the competitors services: (1)
Delivery service, (2) Training service, (3) Installation
service, (4) Repair service
3. Through channel differentiation—the company
may obtain a competitive advantage using designing
effective channel coverage, specialization, and
performance.
4. Through people differentiation—the company
may invest to manpower by hiring and developing
competent people who are better than the people
managed by the competitors.
5. Through image differentiation—the companies
must create and establish distinctive images of the
brand that would set them apart from their
competitors. Marketers may use symbols in doing
this.
STEP 2. Choosing the right competitive advantage.
In choosing the right competitive advantage,
many marketing experts agree that companies must
boldly promote only one salient benefits to the target
market.
According to Rosser Reeves, this benefit is
called the unique selling proposition or USP. Ideally,
a company should select one most important benefit
among may attributes of the brand and focus on it by
endorsing the salient benefit as ‘number one’.
Marketers must know that most consumers
recall ‘number one’ better, particularly those
consumers who are exposed to various competing
communication. Therefore, it is a very smart move
for marketers to go for the number one attribute.
On the contrary, other marketing practitioners
think that promoting more than one differentiating
factor or benefit is acceptable.
benefits that the brand offers if the positioning is too
subtle. On the other hand, overtone positioning may
be questionable. Consumers might think that the
brand is just exaggerating its attribute. Therefore,
the positioning is not unbelievable.
Criteria for determining which differences to
promote: Important, Distinctive, Superior,
Communicable, Preemptive, Affordable, and
Profitable.
STEP 3. Choosing a comprehensive
positioning strategy.
Various brand positioning strategies:
1. More for more positioning involves providing the
most upscale product or service and charging a
higher price to cover the higher costs.
2. More for the same positioning is useful in
attacking competitors using more-for-more
positioning by introducing bran offering comparable
quality at a lower price.
3. Same for less positioning can be a powerful value
proposition.
4. Less-for-much positioning involves meeting
consumers’ lower performance or quality
requirements at a much lower price.
5. More for Less positioning is the winning value
proposition.
Communication takes in after the companies
have chosen a position for the brand. The role now
of the marketers is to deliver to the identified position
to target audience.
Positioning should not be left on the drawing
board. It must be executed with the utmost
preciseness.
competitors.
utmost preciseness.