Positioning (marketing)

This page is incorrectly labeled. It should be "positioning" or "positioning (business)" or "positioning (marketing)", not market positioning. The market is not being positioned. A brand or product is being positioned in the minds of a group of people. Why do people change articles without reading or understanding them? There is a usage for "market positioning" in marketing : it is an aggregate term referring to the competitive position of a firm relative to other firms - But that is not what this article is about.

In marketing, positioning is the technique in which marketers try to create an image or identity for a product, brand, or company. It is the 'place' a product occupies in a given market as perceived by the target market. Positioning is something that is done in the minds of the target market. A product's position is how potential buyers see the product. Positioning is expressed relative to the position of competitors.

Re-positioning involves changing the identity of a product, relative to the identity of competing products, in the collective minds of the target market.

The ability to spot a positioning opportunity is a sure test of a persons' marketing ability. Successful positioning strategies are usually rooted in a product's sustainable competitive advantage. The most common basis' for constructing a product positioning strategy are:

positioning on specific product features
positioning on specific benefits, needs, or solutions
positioning on specific use categories
positioning on specific usage occations
positioning against another product
positioning through product class dissociation

More generally, there are three types of positioning concepts:

1 functional positions
- solve problems
- provide benefits to customers
2 symbolic positions
- self-image enhancement
- ego identification
- belongingness and social meaningfullness
- affective fulfillment
3 experiential positions
- provide sensory stimulation
- provide cognitive stimulation

Positioning is facilitated by a graphical technique called perceptual mapping, various survey techniques, and statistical techniques like multi-dimensional scaling, factor analysis, cojoint analysis, and logit analysis. Generally, the product positioning process involves:

1 identifying competing products
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 relevent 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 positions of competing products
- the position of your product
- the position of the ideal vector
8 select optimum position

The term was coined in 1981 by Al Ries and Jack Trout in their classic marketing monograph Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind