Positioning Essay ⋆ Business Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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:

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);
Allison Enright, “The Art of Reis,” Marketing News (March 1, 2006);
Giep Franzen and Sandra E. Moriarty, The Science and Art of Branding (M. E. Sharpe, 2008);
Burt Helm, “Which Ads Don’t Get Skipped?” BusinessWeek (September 3, 2007);
Graham J. Hooley, Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2007);
Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong, Principles of Marketing (Prentice Hall, 2009);
Esko Penttinen and Jonathan Palmer, “Improving Firm Positioning Through Enhanced Offerings and Buyer-Seller Relationships,” Industrial Marketing Management (v.36/5, 2007);
Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (McGraw, 1981);
Jing Wang, Brand New China: Advertising, Media, and Commercial Culture (Harvard University Press, 2008).

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