Position and Positioning

A position is a stance a consumer takes regarding a product, service, or the nature of an organization relative to the competition. Positioning depends on how a consumer compares a product to the competitors' product. Hence, a consumer ultimately determines a product's position and plays a key role in marketers' positioning strategies.

One can take the example of a luxury car. Undoubtedly, a specific corporate image and specific product attributes or visuals would immediately come to mind. In sum, this is the position that luxury car occupies in the hearer's brain. More precisely, positioning is a process that marketers use to persuade consumers to think favorably about their particular brand, product, service, or organization. It is “the process of creating a perception in the consumer's mind,” according to Kenneth Clow and Donald Baack (2002, p. 99). Given this example, a specific automobile marketing team's “positioning” will have been successful if the consumer thinks of their automobile rather than a competitor's model.

According to an integrated marketing communication (IMC) approach, all elements of the mix—advertising, public relations, personal selling, and so forth—generate synergistic energy that is used to build lasting relationships with key stakeholders. In this way, marketing is considered a philosophy, rather than simply a function. Hence, IMC campaigns that involve strategies designed to nurture relationships with consumers will be most successful in competing for a “share” of the consumer's mind—and thus increasing sales—since their brand is the one the consumer readily thinks of when deciding which product to buy amidst a sea of competitive brands. Moreover, effective positioning simplifies the process for consumers: they expend little mental energy on purchase decisions because they choose certain brands spontaneously.

All elements of the marketing mix are involved in the positioning process. For example, public relations practitioners use two-way communication between the organization and consumers and other key publics to develop solid relationships. Advertisers use one-way communication strategies involving slogans, taglines, themes, characters, images—all designed to generate awareness and promote key product attributes and benefits to the consumer. The sales team works one-on-one with vendors to stock the marketplace, place point-of-sales materials, create special end-aisle displays—and so on.

As simple as this process seems on the surface, the position-positioning dynamic is a deeply complex [Page 630]one. Essentially, a product's position is intangible, dynamic, and elusive. A competitor's sale price, new technologies, a negative news story, and numerous other variables can affect a consumer's perception. Furthermore, what marketers think they know about their products and consumers often is quite different from the reality. It is the marketer's job to discover which consumer perceptions should be built upon, maintained, or reinforced and which should be changed, displaced, or deemphasized.

Usually, reinforcing a position that reflects well on the organization is much easier than repositioning or reversing a consumer's negative view. Consumers' key beliefs and attitudes are paramount. For example, Johnson & Johnson's successful handling of the Tylenol product-tampering episodes in 1982 included reemphasizing hospitals' trust in administering Tylenol to patients. On the other hand, Winn-Dixie supermarkets has found that changing customers' negative perceptions of the stores' beef quality since the 1998 charges of past-due meat sales has been comparatively more challenging.

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