Marketing Positioning and Sustainability Quiz

Marketing Management Reconsidered - Session 4: Positioning

• Positioning is the strategic choice of key elements in a value proposition
• A strong positioning enables a product or service to stand out in the market and in customers' minds.

Sessions and Group Projects

•  Session 1 (October 3): Introduction to marketing management in a constrained world
• Session 2 (October 15): Brand management: How to manage a brand sustainably?
• Session 3 (October 17): Segmentation & Targeting
• Session 4 (October 18): Positioning
• Session 5 (October 22): Mix Product: designing a sustainable offer
• Session 6 (October 23): Mix Price: implementing a responsible pricing strategy
• Session 7 (November 4 or 7): Mix Distribution: designing an inclusive and sustainable distribution strategy
• Session 8 (November 7 or 8): Mix Communication: implementing a responsible communication strategy
• Session 9 (End of November / Beg of December): Final Individual Exam (Quiz)
• Session 10 (December 12): Final Presentations of Group Projects

What is Positioning?

• Positioning is the strategic choice of key elements in a product or service value proposition.
• This enables the product or service to stand credibly, attractively, and uniquely in its own market.
• Brand policy is different from brand image; the former is broader and richer, while the latter is the knowledge, beliefs, and associations the public has with an offering.

Why Position Your Offering?

• Prevents customer from doing it themselves or not doing it at all (i.e., choosing a competitor's product)
• Plays a crucial role in customer purchasing decisions
• Keystone of the marketing mix and condition for its coherence.
• Guarantee of continuity for the product or service, acting as lever to take action but also as constraint to any changes or evolution of the market.

Pillars of Positioning

• Economically profitable
• Difficult to imitate in short and long term
• Simple, clear, concise
• Long lasting
• Credibility

Positioning Process

• Define the competitive universe as a reference.
• Identify competitors in the reference universe and select the three closest competitors or groups of competitors.
• Assess the competitors' points of difference and similarities.
• Select a position.
• State the position.

Competitive Universe

• The products to which a given offer will be naturally compared
• Usually a product category
• Consider market segments vs product categories

Importance of Reference Universe

• Apple launching its watch
• Minute Maid's fruit juice positioning

Choosing Competitors to Analyze

• Think about usage rather than the product itself.
• Define a market's product segmentation criteria (e.g. the expected benefits, socio-demographic criteria).
• Identify the top competitors who are leaders in the market, and competitors whose positioning is similar to what you want to consider (2-4 competitors).
• Analyze the characteristics of these competitors' offer mix to understand their respective positioning.

Points of Difference vs. Points of Similarity

• Similarity: Associated with the brand's mental associations in its competitive universe. Includes the product category, (expectations of the category), correlational similarities (positive or negative correlations to other attributes)
• Difference: Must be strongly associated with the brand and positively judged by consumers, but not found at the same level of the competitor, relevant for the company, achievable by the company, differentiating against competitors.

Making Sure Points of Difference are Value Drivers & Sources of Competitive Advantages

• Ensure that these points of difference are valuable and drive competitive advantages.

Blue Ocean Strategy

• Compete in existing market space, beat competition, exploit existing demand to achieve value cost trade-off
• Create uncontested market space, make competition irrelevant, create and capture new market demand to break from value-cost trade-off.

The Blue Ocean Canvas

• Visual tool to analyze value positioning of products or services with various examples (Circuses, Hotels, Wine)

The Antes vs Drivers Matrix

• Step 1: Make a list of every aspect of the company's product or service offering.
• Step 2: Evaluate each statement in terms of how different it is from competitors' offerings and its importance to the target audience.
• Step 3: Map these statements using a grid (with extreme similarity and extreme importance as the axes). Create separate grids for economic impact and benefits, and social impact and benefits.

Other Mappings to Identify Points of Similarity & Difference

• Semantic scales
• Value Assessment Map
• Perceptual Map (examples for tv, drinks, and amusement parks are provided)

Possible Differentiation Axes

• Product performance/features/benefits
• Brand imaginary (against competitor, against a market, or another product type)

Different Levels of Differentiation

• Product attributes
• Benefits to consumers
• Company value

Differentiate on Sustainability?

• Some brands capitalize on altruistic/social or biospheric benefits to differentiate and create preference with consumers.
• Consumers may prefer a product that positively affects the planet.

Limits of Positioning Focused Solely on Sustainable Attributes

• Sustainable attributes are often intangible (vague, ambiguous, remote from the self )
• Correlational similarities can be positive (kindness) or negative (low performance).

Integrating Sustainability into Positioning

• Reassure consumers regarding the performance of sustainable products.
• Sustainable attribute as one element, associate it with ego-centric benefits, (e.g. green bundling or triple value propositions)

Qualities of Effective Positioning

• Simple
• Attractive
• Credible
• Different
• Profitable
• Long-lasting

How to State the Positioning Statement

• Format: [Product/offer X] is/proposes [product category] with [characteristics] which allows [target] to [expected benefit(s)].

How to Test the Effectiveness and Relevance of Positioning?

• First Step: Filtering ideas internally (criteria like target size, feasibility, innovative benefit, competition, and brand fit.
• Second Step: External Test (Qualitative - focus groups & interviews; Quantitative – questionnaires).

Workshop #4

• Define triple-layered Business Model Canvas
• Value Proposition Canvas
• Build Blue Ocean Canvas
• Antes vs Drivers Matrix for the sustainable Product-Service System.
• Create a Positioning Statement for the brand.

Work-in-Progress Submission

• Report is due by October 20th
• Includes diagnosis, new product idea benefits, segmentation, positioning strategy.