Marketing Strategy

I. “Fast Food Turns Healthy” discusses how Subway implemented a new positioning to distinguish it from its competitors. By updating its position and image, Subway grew to a nationwide chain of stores whose sales volume surpassed $1 billion.

II. Strategic Challenges Addressed in Chapter 7

a. Brand positioning: the place a brand occupies in customers’ minds relative to their needs and competing brands; the marketer’s decision-making intended to create such a position

i. Comprises both competitive and customer considerations

ii. Concerned with differentiation: when an existing brand in an overcrowded marketplace of similar brands can be given a distinctive position in the minds of targeted prospects

b. Addresses the question: how should a business position its product offering so customers in the target market perceive the offering as providing the benefits they seek, thereby giving the product an advantage over current and potential future competitors?

III. Differentiation: One Key To Customer Preference and Competitive Advantage

a. Consumers choose what they buy for one of two reasons:

i. What they choose is better

ii. What they choose is cheaper

b. The good or service they choose is almost always different from others they could have chosen: differentiation is why people buy

c. Differentiation among competing brands

i. Brand positioning allows marketer to take advantage of differences and position goods or services to better meet the needs of customers in a segment

ii. Creating both physical and perceptual differences, using all elements of the marketing mix, is what effective brand positioning seeks to accomplish

IV. Physical Positioning

a. A physical positioning analysis is useful because:

i. Provides useful information particularly in the early stages of identifying and designing new product offerings

ii. Contributes to a better marketing/R&D interface by determining...