Product positioning strategies

Presented by MUNESH PALURU

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Different types of strategies to positioning the products

i. Using product characteristics or customer benefitsii. The price-quality approachiii. The use or applications approachiv. The product-user approachv. The product-class approachvi. The cultural symbol approachvii. The competitor approachViii. Brand positioning strategy iX. Corporate positioning

i. Using product characteristics or customer benefits:

• In this case, segmentation is done keeping in mind the product characteristics or customer benefits.

• Sometimes, a new product is positioned with respect to a product characteristic that competitors have ignored. BenQ was positioned as a provider of morphing-enabled mobile pictures, a feature absolutely new in the market. Sometimes a product attempts to position itself along two or more product characteristics simultaneously. For example, Mahindra & Mahindra Scorpio was positioned as both reliable and trendy MUV.

a. Physical characteristics:• These are the most objective criteria and can be measured on

some physical scale such as temperature, colour intensity, distance, strength of fragrance etc.

b. Pseudo-physical characteristics:• These reflect physical properties that are not easily measured. The

examples are spiciness, type of fragrance, shininess, creaminess etc.

c. Benefits:• These refer to advantages that promote the well being of the

consumer. Examples are thirst quenching, hunger satisfying, not harming the skin etc.

ii. The price-quality approach:

• This approach justifies various price-quality categories of the products. Manufacturers deliberately attempt to offer more in terms of service, features or performance in case of certain products known as Premium products and in return, they charge higher price, partly to cover higher costs and partly to help communicate the fact they are of higher quality. On the other hand, there are some products known as mass products, where the main matter оf concern is price keeping a minimum quality standard commitment.

iii. The use or applications approach:

• Another way to position is to consider the use or application. One good example is Itch Guard skin ointment (cream base) from Paras Pharmaceuticals, which has been positioned as an Over The Counter (OTC) medicine (i.e. the medicine that does not require prescription) to “relieve sweat itch due to INTERTRIGO”.

iv. The product-user approach

• This deals with positioning a product keeping in mind a specific user or a class of users. Cosmetics brands like Revlon, L’Oreal or Lakme position themselves targeting fashion-conscious women.

v. The product-class approach

• Some products need to make critical positioning decisions that involve product-class associations. For example, Nescafe Bru positioned itself as instant coffee.

vi. The cultural symbol approach

• Many companies use deeply entrenched cultural symbols to differentiate their brands form their competitors. The use of a character named Gattu by Asian Paints helps them to position itself as a brand that is always ready to help, quick in decision-making and very much young and contemporary.

vii. The competitor approach

• The positioning can be made with an explicit or implicit frame of reference of one or more competitors. There are 2 reasons behind this:

• a. The competitor may have a firm, well-defined image developed over many years and this image can be used as a bridge to help to communicate another image referenced to it. It is like when you give your address, you mention some well known landmarks like bank, office, school etc.

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• b. Sometimes it is not only important how good the consumers think about you, but also it is important that they believe you are better that a given competitor.

• The very good example can be found in newspapers’ and magazines’ market, where the newspaper like Dainik Jagran or magazine like Business World compare themselves with competitors like Punjab Kesari or Business Today respectively in terms of circulation and readership.

Viii. Brand positioning strategy

• brand positioning is defined as the conceptual place you want to own in the target consumer’s mind — the benefits you want them to think of when they think of your brand. An effective brand positioning strategy will maximize customer relevancy and competitive distinctiveness, in maximizing brand value.

continued• There are a variety of ways to position a brand, and it’s

useful to consider brand positioning examples to illustrate how these can be effective. Perhaps the most common approach is positioning on a category or product benefit, which can be particularly effective if your brand is already the category leader, or viable “white space” benefits exist.

• Other alternatives include positioning the product and the consumer, positioning how the company does business and positioning directly against the competitor. Here are some brand positioning examples (using brand taglines associated with the positioning essence).

iX. Corporate positioning

• Effective positioning creates a clear corporate identity in the minds of customers and can help increase sales and profitability. When you develop a positioning strategy that clearly differentiates your company from competitors, you can provide customers with compelling reasons to buy from you. Implementing such a strategy is a key to being able to set the prices you want and achieve long-term goals.