Brand positioning

KuvykinKuvykin Brand positioning.
Effective Brand Positioning is contingent upon identifying and communicating a brand's uniqueness, differentiation and verifiable value. It is important to note that "me too" brand positioning contradicts the notion of differentiation and should be avoided at all costs. This type of copycat brand positioning only works if the business offers its solutions at a significant discount over the other competitor(s).
Generally, the Kuvykin brand positioning process involves:

1. Identifying the business's direct competition (could include players that offer your product/service amongst a larger portfolio of solutions)
2. Understanding how each competitor is positioning their business today (e.g. claiming to be the fastest, cheapest, largest, the #1 provider, etc.)
3. Documenting the provider's own positioning as it exists today (may not exist if startup business)
4. Comparing the company's positioning to its competitors' to identify viable areas for differentiation
5. Developing a distinctive, differentiating and value-based positioning concept
6. Creating a positioning statement with key messages and customer value propositions to be used for communications development across the variety of target audience touch points (advertising, media, PR, website, etc.)

Product positioning process

Generally, the product positioning process involves:

1. Defining the market in which the product or brand will compete (who the relevant buyers are)
2. Identifying the attributes (also called dimensions) that define the product 'space'
3. Collecting information from a sample of customers about their perceptions of each product on the relevant attributes
4. Determine each product's share of mind
5. Determine each product's current location in the product space
6. Determine the target market's preferred combination of attributes (referred to as an ideal vector)
7. Examine the fit between:
   • The position of your product
   • The position of the ideal vector

Positioning concepts

More generally, there are three types of positioning concepts:

1. Functional positions
   • Solve problems
   • Provide benefits to customers
   • Get favorable perception by investors (stock profile) and lenders
2. Symbolic positions
   • Self-image enhancement
   • Ego identification
   • Belongingness and social meaningfulness
   • Affective fulfillment
3. Experiential positions
   • Provide sensory stimulation
   • Provide cognitive stimulation

Measuring the positioning

Positioning is facilitated by a graphical technique called perceptual mapping, various survey techniques, and statistical techniques like multi dimensional scaling, factor analysis, conjoint analysis, and logit analysis.

Repositioning a company

In volatile markets, it can be necessary - even urgent - to reposition an entire company, rather than just a product line or brand. When Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley suddenly shifted from investment to commercial banks, for example, the expectations of investors, employees, clients and regulators all needed to shift, and each company needed to influence how these perceptions changed. Doing so involves repositioning the entire firm.
This is especially true of small and medium-sized firms, many of which often lack strong brands for individual product lines. In a prolonged recession, business approaches that were effective during healthy economies often become ineffective and it becomes necessary to change a firm's positioning. Upscale restaurants, for example, which previously flourished on expense account dinners and corporate events, may for the first time need to stress value as a sale tool.
Repositioning a company involves more than a marketing challenge. It involves making hard decisions about how a market is shifting and how a firm's competitors will react. Often these decisions must be made without the benefit of sufficient information, simply because the definition of "volatility" is that change becomes difficult or impossible to predict.
Positioning is however difficult to measure, in the sense that customer perception on a product may not tested on quantitative measures.