Positioning

Positioning

Positioning: "The Battle for your Mind" (Al Ries and Jack Trout, 1981 book, Positioning). Positioning begins with a product; the concept really is about positioning that product in the minds of the consumer. Positioning is a powerful tool that allows us to create an image; consumers are inundated with advertisements, with advertisers spending hundreds of dollars annually per consumer in the U.S. The consumer's mind is geared to the largest volume of advertising and accepts only what is consistent with prior knowledge and experience.

The best approach to getting into someone's mind is to be first. Positioning is a perceptual location. It is where your product or service fits into the marketplace. It is very easy for the consumer to remember who is first, and much more difficult to remember who is second, even if the second product offers a better value, and is a better product. Simply, positioning is how your target market defines you in relation to your competitors.

There are some key elements of positioning and they are: Pricing. Is your product a premium item, in the middle, or cheap, cheap, cheap. Quality. Is your product well produced? What controls are in place to assure consistency? Do you offer the consumer guarantee's, warranties, and return policies? Service. Do you offer customer service and support? Is your product customized and personalized? Distribution. How will the consumer purchase your product? The distribution channel is a very important part of positioning. Packaging. Packaging is crucial; it makes a strong statement for your product. So make sure it is delivering the message you intend it to.

Positioning is your competitive strategy. This is where you leverage what you do best, and what is unique about your product or service. Identify your strongest strength and use it to position your product or service. Positioning is what the consumer believes and not what the provider wants them to believe. Positioning can change due to the reaction and action plan of the competitor. Managing your product position requires that you know your customer base and understand your competition; this is generally done through the company's market research department.

Product positioning is not new. The history of product positioning dates back to 1910 with an advertisement for the Holeproof Hosiery Company. The ad line read "To the 5,196,267 Unmarried Men Of America" The appeal was a long-lasting pair of socks. Unmarried men were assumed to be either not capable of, or not interested in, darning socks.

However, product positioning strategies have existed for decades; the proper positioning of a product is now considered essential for marketing success. With today's marketplace being so diverse, it is imperative for advertisers to attract potential customers with dissimilar needs and requirements.

In the 1920's General Motors increased sales by product positioning, capitalizing on Ford's mistake of "one automobile for everyone" concept. Even prior to General Motors, some automobile manufactures had segmented the market to the rational and logic buyer, for example, Oldsmobile in 1901 said "Board for a horse for a year $180; gasoline for a year $35, the economy is evident"

By the 1960's most products were positioned to appeal to mass market, where as 40 years ago married couples were the target market. Marketing and advertising have changed dramatically in the past few decades. Today we live in a society with alternate-life styles which make mass marketing less effective and substantially less attractive. Basic advertising geared to the typical or average consumer is no longer considered effective for most products. Today a product must be positioned to specific segment of the population. This type of marketing was starting to take hold in the mid 1960's. This trend of target marketing has accelerated through the years and by the end of the 1980's was entrenched directly in all advertising.

There has been company's over the past that have executed the art of positioning very well and not so well. In many cases companies tend to use the same name of an existing branded product, avoiding having to build a name from scratch. A prime example of this is when Alka-Seltzer named a new product Alka-Seltzer Plus. The brand name Alka-Seltzer was already embedded in the minds of the consumer, so they saw Alka-Seltzer Plus as a better Alka-Seltzer and the sales came at the expense of the original Alka-Seltzer, and not from the market share of the competition. This is poor execution of establishing a position for a new product, as the lead product lost position. In another example, Life Savers attempted to launch Life Savers Chewing Gum; Life Savers is famous for the small round hard candies with a hole in the middle. Trying to ride on the name of Life Savers, the chewing gum ultimately failed. However, the company came back and introduced a new soft bubble gum named Bubble Yum, this was successful not only because it built its own brand name, but was the first soft bubble gum on the market. This example shows us the company learned from their mistake and launched a product establishing a brand name and being first which equates to success.

In an example of a company positioning a product with success is Nyquil. Nyquil was perceived as the premier daytime cough suppressant, but made people drowsy and tired. The company took the drowsy and tired affects and turned them into a positioning masterpiece of Nyquil "the night time, coughing, sniffling, sneezing so