Management Accountancy

UV5792

Jan. 20, 2012

BRAND POSITIONING STATEMENTS

The fundamentals of marketing are built on the fact that people have different likes and dislikes—what is appealing to some may be distasteful to others. A certain product may be very desirable for one group of individuals but be uninteresting to another. The process of branding a product involves building awareness of and preference for the specific name of the product that is being branded. Central to the branding process is the brand positioning statement, often simply called the positioning statement. The positioning statement is a short written document that lays out how the marketer believes others should think, feel, and relate to the brand. This note discusses the process of brand positioning and how to construct positioning statements. Brand positioning is all about the customer; indeed it is driven by the customer. Developing an effective positioning statement involves identifying what the target customer group currently claims as its needs. In response to those needs, product positioning should offer consumers strong reasons why they ought to buy the brand. One way to do this is to define product attributes so that consumers believe that only this brand would fulfill their needs. This means contrasting the brand with competitors’ brands. The central idea is to make sure the customer plays an active role in positioning development—think of it as a type of relationship-building exercise with consumers. What does the target group identify as its current needs, and how can the brand meet those needs? Lean more toward the customers and less toward the brand. Brand positioning should be the first step, even before advertising, for building and marketing a brand. In order to do that, positioning should be developed before all the other marketing substrategies. Actually, many strategic activities depend on a clear, crisp brand position. When developed first, it acts as a roadmap for building up the brand and...