5.4: Positioning and Repositioning Offerings

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Learning Objectives

Explain why positioning is an important element when it comes to targeting consumers.
Describe how a product can be positioned and mapped.
Explain what repositioning is designed is to do.

Why should buyers purchase your offering versus another? If your product faces competition, you will need to think about how to “position” it in the marketplace relative to competing products. After all you don’t want the product to be just another “face in the crowd” in the minds of consumers. Positioning is how consumers perceive a product relative to the competition. Companies want to have a distinctive image and offering that stands out from the competition in the minds of consumers.

One way to position your product is to plot customer survey data on a perceptual map. A perceptual map is a two-dimensional graph that visually shows where your product stands, or should stand, relative to your competitors, based on criteria important to buyers. The criteria can involve any number of characteristics—price, quality, level of customer service associated with the product, and so on. An example of a perceptual map is shown in Figure 5.10. To avoid head-to-head competition with your competitors, you want to position your product somewhere on the map where your competitors aren’t clustered.

Figure 5.10: An Example of a Perceptual Map Source: Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_mapping. Image used with permission.