Positioning Essay

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A marketing term, positioning is the act of memorably and positively anchoring a product,  service, idea, individual, or experience  in the minds of customers (including prospective customers). A product  that is well positioned is widely perceived by the target audience as possessing distinctive, unique, and appealing features.  As a result,  it is not  easily confused  with other products, even those that occupy a similar category. Effective positioning, therefore, is critical to a product’s success, because this marketing tool helps a product stand out from competitors’ offerings.

While  the  concept  of product  positioning  has  a long history, rooted  in the packaged goods industry, the perceived importance  of positioning, along with a broadened  understanding of the term, gained notable ground in the late 1960s and early 1970s largely because of the work of advertising executives Al Ries and Jack Trout. Ries and Trout claimed that in the modern age of heightened marketing noise and prolific advertising messages assaulting people’s senses, it was more crucial than ever for a firm to pay attention  to developing a solid positioning  strategy for its product,  one that would cut through  the clutter.  They also contended that anything could be positioned—not just products, for instance, but also individuals and ideas.

In 1972, in the influential trade magazine Advertising Age, Ries and Trout proclaimed that the “Positioning Era” had arrived, and they coauthored  a series of articles exploring that topic. These articles eventually became the basis of their bestselling book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. A critical, and controversial, tenet  of their book was that positioning  was not so much  what a marketer  does with a product, but what a marketer  does to the mind  of the prospect. In other words, the process of effective positioning requires marketers to get inside people’s heads to understand which messages, or combination  of messages, are most likely to resonate  and break through the barrage of competing  messages. While Ries and Trout were firm advocates of positioning and encouraged its practice, positioning, seen in this light, could be negatively perceived as a form of mind  manipulation.  Adroit  marketers   who  understood  how  to tap into consumer  psychology purportedly  might be able to entice people to buy an item not necessarily because it was truly the best product  but because it was packaged, promoted,  and  positioned  in such a way as to trigger a purchase  decision that was more emotional  than  rational.  Effective positioning  and ethical positioning are not, therefore, necessarily always synonymous.

In their  quest  to garner  consumers’  attention to their products, marketers  often use a variety of positioning tactics and tools, such as perceptual positioning maps. The purpose of positioning maps is to illustrate how consumers perceive a certain product  with regard to specific buying criteria (like price and performance) in relation to how they perceive competitors’ products on those same criteria. As Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong have explained, marketers often use positioning  maps to help them  design a strong positioning strategy that emphasizes the points of distinction that consumers will find most important.

Another  positioning  tactic  is crafting  a message that dovetails with people’s preexisting ideas and preferences. Ries and Trout  contended  that this is often easier and more effective than trying to convince people to change their minds. As they also emphasized, thoughtfully naming a product is also crucial, as is disseminating an overly simplified message. With regard to the latter tactic, the theory is that short and simple messages are necessary in order to capture the attention  of the  masses who are being bombarded  with thousands of other claims for their attention.

There may be some truth  underlying  this theory that  simple  is better.  In  a recent  study  conducted by digital video recorder  maker TiVo, the television advertisements   that  viewers were  least  inclined  to skip were not particularly  creative or complex; they were low-budget advertisements  that contained basic messages that  were well tailored  to their  audiences. Nevertheless, marketers  who propound such simple positioning  messages sometimes  have been accused of taking a pessimistic  view of the average person’s intelligence  as well as the  average person’s willingness to expend the time and energy necessary to work through more complicated and nuanced messages.

Although much of the literature on positioning in the 1970s and 1980s focused on teaching marketers how to get the masses to pay attention  to their messages, it would be a mistake to view positioning  as an action  always directed  toward  a mass audience. In fact, the  rise of positioning  also led a renewed focus on target markets and segmentation.  As many marketers have discovered, in a crowded, noisy marketplace, it often is easier to craft a positioning statement that resonates  if marketers  narrow the size of their intended audience and then fine-tune their message to that specific group.

Positioning  also reinforces  the importance  of not just target marketing, but also branding, as both positioning and branding  emphasize  the need for product differentiation.  In addition,  marketers’ emphasis on positioning fosters attention on the importance  of an organization  developing a sustainable  long-term strategy and a distinctive, inspiring mission.

With consumers today being bombarded with increasingly  large  numbers  of marketing  messages and  a  stunning   array  of  products   from  which  to choose, effective positioning remains a challenge. The louder the marketing noise in society, the more difficult it is for organizations to break through the clutter, and hence the more important it is for them to hone a well-defined, clear position for their products that will transcend  that noise. Ironically, though, the difficulty of creating  a memorable  spot generally increases in such a competitive and loud environment.

Of course, an organization has an advantage on the positioning front if it is the first to introduce  a product or service. If the whole point of positioning is to create a memorable  anchor  in consumers’ minds, it helps to get there  first. Yet, even an innovative firm with a new product  may fail to position  itself effectively, committing  such errors  as focusing its advertising on product features that consumers do not perceive as important or that  consumers  simply do not understand. For various reasons, many firms find it necessary to engage in repositioning.  The original message may have been flawed, not resonating  with consumers at the time it was introduced.  Or, perhaps the entrance  of new competitors into the field may necessitate  a firm redefining its message and articulating more clearly its points of distinction.

Positioning  therefore  is an ongoing  process,  not just something  that is done at the inception  stage of marketing  a product,  service, or idea. Organizations and  marketers  today widely hail the  importance  of not just achieving but also retaining an effective position  in  a crowded,  noisy, and  constantly  changing marketplace.

Bibliography:   

  1. Ronald Cenfetelli, Izak Benbasat,  and Sameh  Al-Natour,   “Addressing  the  What   and  How  of Online Services: Positioning Supporting-Services Functionality  and  Service Quality  for  Business-to-Consumer Success,” Information  Systems Research (v.19/2, 2008);
  2. Allison Enright, “The Art of Reis,” Marketing News (March 1, 2006);
  3. Giep Franzen  and Sandra E. Moriarty,  The Science and Art of Branding (M. E. Sharpe, 2008);
  4. Burt Helm, “Which Ads Don’t Get Skipped?” BusinessWeek (September 3, 2007);
  5. Graham J. Hooley, Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2007);
  6. Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong, Principles of Marketing  (Prentice  Hall, 2009);
  7. Esko Penttinen   and  Jonathan Palmer, “Improving Firm Positioning  Through  Enhanced Offerings and Buyer-Seller Relationships,” Industrial Marketing Management  (v.36/5, 2007);
  8. Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (McGraw, 1981);
  9. Jing Wang, Brand New China: Advertising, Media, and Commercial Culture (Harvard University Press, 2008).

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