Positioning & Salience

Minor Assignment – Individual Essay

“Positioning and Salience”

The concepts of brand salience and brand positioning are two theories than require sound consideration from a firm in order to achieve success.

Romaniuk and Sharp (2004), define salience as a brands ability to stand out against its competitors. When a current or potential consumer is exposed to the brand in any relevant setting, links to brand name and any other brand features will be created or reinforced. For this reason, the more cues that users can link to a brand, the more likely it will be considered to be purchased in a buying situation (Romaniuk & Sharp 2004). Because of the intense competition between brands, companies need to make their brand as recognisable as possible, so it is familiar to the consumer when they are faced with a choice between competing brands (Van der Lans, Pieters & Wedel 2008).

Market positioning on the other hand is a concept that is used to “classify” the brands image or identity in the mind of its consumers, from which a firm can use to target their consumers needs, based on the brands attributes (Lee, Atkins, Kim & Park 2006). Kotler (cited in Fuchs & Diamantopoulos 2007), argues that for a marketing strategy to be successful, brand positioning needs to create value for the customer, therefore giving them a strong reason to buy the brand. Although it is important that brands are positioned in a way that emphasises their brand attributes, it is imperative that they are positioned differently to their competitors, so customers don’t perceive two competing brands as the same (Sujan & Bettman 1989).

The concepts of brand positioning and brand salience are somewhat interrelated. Since the aim of positioning is to market the brand so “… it occupies a distinct and valued place in the target customers’ mind” (Kotler cited in Nadkarni, 2004), it is important that marketing campaigns remain consistent, and emphasise the same brand attributes so as to give...