Marketing Positioning Essay example
1438 Words
Mar 20th, 2009
6 Pages
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 “over-communicated” society, in which consumers were
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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 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 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 eight to
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 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 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 eight to