Brand Positioning

REVIEW OF LITTERATURE

CHAPTER-II

2.1 REVIEW OF LITTERATURE

Christoph Fuchs and Adamantios Diamantopoulos (1999)

Brand positioning, which refers to the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a favorable and distinctive place in the mind of the target market, is a central success factor for the overall performance of a brand in the marketplace. Despite the importance of the positioning construct, existing methods aimed at measuring the soundness of brand positioning strategies are associated with several limitations. In an attempt to overcome these limitations, the authors develop and validate a generalizable, consumer-derived scale that assesses the effectiveness of brand positioning. Based on a comprehensive literature review, positioning effectiveness is modeled as a multidimensional construct, capturing conceptually-relevant dimensions of positioning success namely favorability, differentiation, and credibility. Favorability, which reflects the magnitude of positive brand associations towards a brand, satisfies the criterion that consumers need to value a brand in order to be attracted. Differentiation, on the other hand, is essential because a well-positioned brand needs to occupy a distinct position in the minds of consumers. Differentiation captures two sub-dimensions namely distinctiveness (i.e., is the brand perceived as similar or distinct in comparison to competitor brands?) and uniqueness (i.e., is the brand the only one of its kind?). Credibility constitutes the third positioning effectiveness dimension and indicates the extent to which the associations consumers hold with a brand are also believable. By conducting nine complementary studies, the authors provide strong evidence of the scale’s dimensionality, reliability, and (discriminant, convergent, nomological, predictive) validity. Overall, the...