Positioning
by
Jerry W. Thomas
What a strange word, “positioning.” Its origins are shrouded in the
fog of history. The popular marketing writers, Jack Trout and Al Ries, started
talking about position or positioning in 1972 or thereabouts, and took credit
later for having invented positioning. However, I believe that positioning was
an emerging concept and a term, in at least limited use, within the marketing
and advertising community at the time that Trout and Ries first wrote about it.
Certainly, the basic concepts of positioning were not new in 1972. The term
“positioning” was described by Trout and Ries as the basic position
in the consumer’s mind occupied by a brand. They saw positioning as an
antidote to the “overcommunicated” society, in which consumers were
drowning in a sea of advertising messages. The key, they argued, was to occupy
a unique position in the consumer’s mind to cut through all of the
confusion caused by brand proliferation and advertising clutter.
The term “positioning” is widely used within the marketing and
advertising communities today, and its meaning has expanded beyond the narrow
definitions of Trout and Ries. Positioning is often used nowadays as a broad
synonym for marketing strategy. However, the terms “positioning”
and “marketing strategy” should not be used interchangeably.
Rather, positioning should be thought of as an element of strategy, a component
of strategy, not as the strategy itself.
The term “positioning” is, and should be, intimately connected to
the concept of “target market.” That is, a brand’s
positioning defines the target audience. For example, an airline could position
itself against other airlines, which defines the target audience as airline
travelers. Or, it could position itself against all modes of transportation
between two destinations, which then defines the target audience as all
travelers between those two markets. The second positioning reaches out to a
much larger target audience. Another example: a brand of peanut butter could
position itself against all competing brands of peanut butter, which defines
the audience as peanut butter users. Or, the brand could position itself
against margarine and butter, which defines a very different target market.
Positioning, then, is analogous to aiming an artillery field gun. How you
position the cannon defines who and what the target is. So, the term
“aiming” is not a bad definition of positioning, and the term
“targeting” is not a bad definition of positioning.
The positioning possibilities that exist for any given brand or service are
almost infinite in number. Some commonly used positioning strategies are:
- Positioning against a broader market; for example,
positioning a bicycle brand as a substitute for the automobile, rather than
as a substitute for other brands of bicycles.
- Positioning against a price segment of the market;
for example, positioning a car brand against luxury imported cars.
- Positioning against a usage segment of the market;
for instance, positioning a brand of cooking oil as the very best brand of
oil for frying chicken.
- Positioning against a geographic segment of a
market; for example, positioning Ford trucks as made for driving conditions
in Texas.
- Positioning against a psychographic segment of
the market; as an example, positioning the Volvo as the car for drivers who
are primarily concerned about safety.
- Positioning against a channel of distribution,
a season of the year, a particular type of weather, a human fear, etc.
Again, positioning possibilities are almost limitless for any given brand and
can be defined in many different ways. The correct positioning of a brand is
basic and fundamental to its success; an incorrect or suboptimal positioning
can doom a brand to underperformance or failure. So, how does one arrive at an
optimal positioning for a given brand? The search for an optimal positioning
begins in the mind of the consumer, and it is here that we must turn to
marketing research for help.
Research Methods For Positioning
The first problem is “who do you talk to” to learn about
positioning, or repositioning, a brand. At the beginning, it’s very
important to talk to consumers representing a broad spectrum of the potential
market. It is in these early stages that you must resist the temptation to
focus in too quickly on a narrow segment of consumers. Keep the market
definitions very broad in the early stages of the research, so that you do not
accidentally preordain the outcome before it even begins. For example, if you
only interview people who are using rotary lawnmowers, you may find that they
only want to buy rotary lawnmowers, but if you interviewed everyone who owned a
lawn, you might identify many different needs, problems, and motives that could
form the basis for a positioning strategy.
Qualitative methods (focus groups, depth interviews,
and ethnography) are essential in the early stages. What do consumers know,
and what do they not know? What language, associations, images, and metaphors
do consumers use in talking about the category? What brands are they familiar
with, and how much do they know about the different brands? What are their perceptions
of each of these brands? What motivates them to consume the product or use the
service? What are the key determinates of brand preference? How is the market
segmented or subdivided? What products or services would be substituted if the
subject brand were unavailable? What are the major channels of distribution,
and how does the channel relate to perceptions and usage of the brands? Who
are the heavy users of the category, the brand? Who are the brand decision makers,
and what are the main elements of the decision process? The qualitative research
should be designed to accomplish two broad objectives: to define an array of
positioning possibilities and to help identify the likely target markets related
to each positioning.
Quantitative methods come next. Some type of survey
research (awareness, trial, and usage, or a segmentation study) is the next
step. Again, as with the qualitative phase, the definition of the sampling universe
must be kept very broad and inclusive—to avoid the preordination error.
The purpose of the quantitative research is to confirm the hunches and hypotheses
from the qualitative research, to more precisely define brand images and associations,
to accurately measure awareness and knowledge levels, and to size the market
segments identified during the qualitative phase. Now, by combining and analyzing
the results of the qualitative and the quantitative research, the number of
basic positioning possibilities can be reduced to a small number of high potential
positioning concepts. However at this stage, these ideas are not yet fully developed
enough for final testing.
Innovation methods are often a next step. Small groups
of target market consumers (often screened to be exceptionally creative) are
used to generate a large number of positioning concepts, based on the results
of the qualitative and quantitative research. That is, the previous marketing
research is used to focus the creative efforts on basic positioning concepts
of known value. A group of 8 to 10 creative individuals representative of the
target market will spend a whole day in a fast-paced, high-energy ideation session
to develop and “flesh out” a large number of positioning concepts
that are “on strategy” and “on target.” The ideation
facilitators then take this creative output and hammer out the final test-ready
positioning concepts. The final concepts would go through a client review process
(to judge feasibility) and a small-sample qualitative review to ensure that
the concepts are communicating as intended.
Positioning concept tests are the final step in the
process. Generally, matched samples of 200 to 300 target market consumers evaluate
the concepts. Each matched sample sees and evaluates only one concept (that
is, the testing is monadic). The core questions revolve about planned purchase
of the brand (given its implicit positioning), the image projected by the brand,
the planned frequency of usage, pricing expectations, distribution expectations,
potential problems, and so forth. Based on these tests, a winning positioning
concept is identified. This winning positioning concept, then, becomes the blueprint
for the development of advertising creative and supporting marketing plans and
materials (packaging, promotion, pricing, brand name, distribution, product
improvements, customer service, and so on).
Every brand has a positioning. Sometimes this positioning is obscure or
unrecognized. Sometimes this positioning is a result of inertia, history, or
competitive activities. However, a brand that wants to be strategically
successful must not leave its positioning to chance or competitors. The company
or brand that aspires to market dominance must take control of its positioning
through the scientific methods of marketing research, and create the optimal
positioning that will guide, focus, and energize its long-term advertising and
marketing efforts. Happy positioning!
Copyright © 2006 by Decision Analyst, Inc.
This article may not be copied, published, or used in any way without written
permission of Decision Analyst.
About the Author
Jerry W. Thomas (jthomas@decisionanalyst.com)
is President/CEO of Dallas-Fort Worth based Decision Analyst. He may be reached
at 1-800-262-5974 or 1-817-640-6166.
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