Market Positioning
The most common definition for Market Positioning
is "A product's position is how potential buyers see the product", and
is expressed relative to the position of competitors.
This differs slightly from the context in
which the term was first published in 1969 by Al Ries and Jack Trout
in the paper "Positioning" is a game people play in today’s me-too market
place" in the publication Industrial Marketing, in which the case is
made that the typical consumer is overwhelmed with unwanted advertising,
and has a natural tendency to discard all information that does not
immediately find a comfortable slot in the consumers mind.
It was then expanded into their ground-breaking first book, "Positioning:
The Battle for Your Mind", in which they define Positioning as "an organized
system for finding a window in the mind. It is based on the concept
that communication can only take place at the right time and under the
right circumstances."
What what most will agree
on is that Positioning is something (perception) that happens in the
minds of the target market. It is the aggregate perception the market
has of a particular company, product or service in relation to their
perceptions of the competitors in the same category.
In marketing, positioning
has come to mean the process by which marketers try to create an image
or identity in the minds of their target market for its product, brand,
or organization. It is the 'relative competitive comparison' their product
occupies in a given market as perceived by the target market.
Re-positioning involves
changing the identity of a product, relative to the identity of competing
products, in the collective minds of the target market.
De-positioning involves
attempting to change the identity of competing products, relative to
the identity of your own product, in the collective minds of the target
market.
The original work on Positioning
was consumer marketing oriented, and was not as much focused on the
question relativity to competitive products as much as it was focused
on cutting through the ambient "noise" and establishing a moment of
real contact with the intended recipient.
The growth of high-tech
marketing may have had much to do with the shift in definition towards
competitive positioning.
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