Process For Product Positioning
Product positioning simply can be defined as the process of companies to make a unique, strong, and reliable image of the company’s offering in the consumer’s mind. The only production of the product is not enough it needs to be marketed and positioned.
Like product – service, and brand also need to be positioned in the market. Product positioning is the continuous process of the company which aims at building a strong position in the market. For this, at least six steps of the product positioning process are needed which are given below:
- Know your firm’s strength
- Know who are actual competitors
- Determine the competitor’s position in the market
- Analyze the customers
- Select the best position
- Monitor the position
Know Your Firm’s Strength
The first step of the product positioning process is to clearly know about the firm’s strengths. It is knowing about – does the firm really has the ability to know about its target market and available resources to deliver them? Does the business firm really want to get that market position? Does the company has resources and human minds to meet its objectives? For this, to clearly know internal analysis (weaknesses and strengths) also used to be done.
Know Who are Actual Competitors
In the second step, there identified the actual competitors. Your firm alone is not in the market, there is a set of business firms that are selling similar kinds of products and services. An actual competitor may be the one that has a significant effect on the firm’s policy, marketing strategy, and performance as a whole.
For example, maybe the actual competitors of the Samsung Smartphone are Oppo, Xiaomi, Vivo, Huawei, etc.
Determine the Competitors Position in the Market
After knowing the competitors, the next task is the determination of the actual position of the competitors in the market. Competitors’ position in the market is their offerings image, value, brand in the consumer’s mind.
For this, the market has to know how customers perceive competitors’ products and services? How do customers evaluate competitors’ offerings? What is the image that customers have of your competitors? What uniqueness is in the competitor’s offerings for consumers are buying? The position of competitors in the market may be in product quality, attributes, price, high services, quick delivery, friendliness, etc. It relates to the comparative analysis of different competitors.
Analyze Customers
The fourth step of product positioning is well understanding all sets of customers. The customers are analyzed on the basis of their objective of use of the product and services. As the customers differ in terms of their purchasing objective, need, problem desire, taste, and so on. A clear analysis of these variables makes a clear way to select the best position.
For analysis of the customers objective, some questions may be asked as, in which feature of the product customers give more preference? What is the desire of the concerned customers? What problems do they face while selecting and using the product? Are the customers are price or quality-sensitive? What do they actually need, etc?
Select the best Position
After effective analysis of customers, the best group of customers is selected. The selected group of customers is the objective position of the firm where it wants to make its offerings. The best position of the firm is one that has the potentiality to give more opportunities in terms of sales, profits, and matches with the firm’s goals and resources.
Maybe the position of the firm would be low price, high quality, better service, health-supportive product, specific problem solution product, particular age group of people, and so on. After the selection of the best position, promotional ideas and activities are employed to persuade, motivate, and attract the target customers. At the end of this step, the marketing mix activities are in the work.
Monitor the Position
Monitoring the performance of the position is the last step in the product positioning process. As already said, product positioning is a continuous process till the existence of the firm. Once the various promotional and marketing programs are in operation to get the targeted position, it should be seen as how it is going.
The performance of the position needs to be monitored and evaluated regularly – to see does it meet the goal of the firm or not. If it goes well as the firm wanted, further modification is not required. And, if there is any problem or a particular situation that stops the operation of product positioning, it should be noticed, and if necessary some changes should be done in the positioning strategies and process.