MKT/498
January 23, 2012
Delynn ByarsMarketing Analysis
Creating a company image, brand, or new product in a given market can be difficult, and getting a target market to notice can be even harder. Whether marketing a service, a company or a person, positioning is crucial to the success of any product. Positioning of that product or service is about how to get into the mind of the potential customer. When positioning a product a company wants the customer to recognize the product was designed especially for him or her. For marketers to develop a marketing strategy he or she must use different types of analysis to determine product positioning, competitive positioning, customer perceptions, and distribution-channel …show more content…
A product’s position is based on two elements the product’s standing relative to the competition and how it is perceived by the customer. Marketers can use factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, and conjoint analysis to determine position of a product in a given market. Therefore, product positioning is the process of creating an image and value so consumers in a target market understand the nature of a company and its products relative to the competition (Clow & Baack, 2007). In doing this, a company is sending a message to consumers and trying to establish a competitive advantage that it hopes will appeal to customers in the target segment. In essence, therefore, the marketing mix can be seen as the tactical details of the organization’s positioning strategy. Where, for example, the organization is pursuing a high-quality position, this need to be reflected not just in the quality of the product or service, but in every element of the mix, including price, the pattern of distribution, the style of advertising and the after-sales service. Without this consistency, the believability of the positioning strategy reduces …show more content…
Marketers should obtain a list of competitors and secondary data about the benefits expected by customers, the industry, and strength of each competitor in relation to one another as well as the rating of each competitor based on the key success factors (Clow & Baack, 2007). Competitor profiling, a technique that gives more information about the companies and competitors is also used to analysis competitive positioning. Gaining knowledge about the competitors is a very important intrinsic part of a corporate strategy and the value of a customer is defined by the relativity to what the competitor may