A brand’s product positioning strategy should be integral to the company’s advertising and

marketing strategy. Consider any two from the given pairs and suggest how their product
positioning differs in each case.
• a. Android versus Apple

Why is product positioning important?

 Each brand has to know its customers to provide a product that resonates with their
needs. A well-thought-out strategy can determine the position of this product within the
market and identify its benefits for consumers.
 The process involves creating a particular image of a brand and its products in
consumers’ minds and identifying the key benefits to show how a particular product
differs from competitors’ alternatives. Afterward, the difference is communicated to a
brand’s target audience through the most effective communication channels. The
messages brands convey to their customers should evoke interest.
 Marketers need to determine the best ways to present specific products and reach their
target audience based on customers’ needs, competitive alternatives, the most effective
communication channels, and tailored messages. Implementing product positioning
strategies enables companies to create messages that address their customers’ needs
and wants and entice them to purchase.

Benefits of product positioning

It helps in:

 identifying key benefits of a product and matching them with customers’ needs
 finding a competitive advantage even when the market changes
 meeting customers’ expectations
 reinforcing your brand’s name and its products
 winning customer loyalty
 creating an effective promotional strategy
 attracting different customers
 improving competitive strength
 launching new products
 presenting new features of existing products
Product positioning strategies

 Characteristics-based positioning
 Pricing-based positioning
 Use or application-based positioning
 Quality or prestige-based positioning
 Competitor-based positioning

Steps to position the product

 Define your target audience

 Identify the key benefits of your product
 Establish brand credibility
 Offer a unique value proposition
 Consider audience segmentation
 Craft your messaging
 Do a competitive analysis
 Demonstrate your expertise
 Focus on your competitive advantage
 Maintain your brand’s position

Positioning strategies of Apple and Android

Apple is a multinational technology company. Apple has more than 520 retail locations around
the world, including Mumbai, London, Dubai, Vienna, and New York. As of now, the iPhone
maker has 272 physical stores in the US, 45 in China, 39 in the United Kingdom, 28 in Canada, 22
in Australia, 20 in France, and now two in India - Apple BKC in Mumbai and Apple Saket in New
Delhi.

In its stores, Apple sells various Apple products, including Mac personal computers, iPhone
smartphones, iPad tablet computers, Apple Watch smartwatches, Apple TV digital media
players, software, and both Apple-branded and selected third-party accessories.

The first retail store in India at Mumbai’s BKC is designed to be one of the most energy-
efficient Apple Store locations in the world, with a dedicated solar array and zero reliance on
fossil fuels for store operations.
Apple BKC offers Apple Pickup, which makes it even easier for customers to place an order
online and pick up products when it is most convenient for them. The store also has more than
100 team members who collectively speak over 20 languages, including local Indian languages.
Apple’s brand positioning is based on three key elements: innovation, design, and customer
experience. These three factors allow Apple to stay ahead of competitors while maintaining a
strong sense of identity.

Apple products and services are created with phenomenal attention to detail, addressing key
pain points in the market and constantly differentiating the company from its competitors. 

Apple’s culture of innovation is evident throughout the company. From the products to the
people who work there, Apple employees are encouraged to think outside the box and develop
new ideas. This helps Apple stay at the forefront of technology and keep customers returning
for more.

Apple has a branding strategy that focuses on emotions. The Apple brand personality is about
lifestyle; imagination; liberty regained; innovation; passion; hopes, dreams, and aspirations; and
power to the people through technology. The Apple brand personality is also about simplicity
and the removal of complexity from people’s lives; people-driven product design; and being a
really humanistic company with a heartfelt connection with its customers.

For years Apple has ranked among the topmost valuable brands globally, according to
the BrandFinance valuation methodology.

Design is the starting point of Apple’s whole product development procedure. It is considered as
the foundation principle of Apple, Inc. The brand not only produces the most powerful new
products on the market, with consistent investment in research and development, but it also
promises customers a way to enhance their identity. 

On the retail side, the company’s vertical integration has created unique opportunities to create
the desired brand experience and control the customer journey. Moreover, the retail operations
offer the chance to own technical support as well as educate and train existing and prospective
customers in Apple’s ecosystem of products and services.

The next thing, maybe one of the most important, is that they do not focus on profits but rather
leaving their customers satisfied. There is the Genius Bar where you get technical support with
your products, the forum (centre of the store with the large screen) where they have
community events and sessions with experts on how to maximize your experience with your
product, the board room to help developers learn how to get the most out of their products,
Today at Apple offering sessions for free and The Plaza (select locations only) space outside the
store with free Wi-Fi that occasionally hosts events.

THE TARGET AUDIENCE

Apple’s target market is another core component of the company’s positioning strategy. Apple’s
positioning strategy focuses on attracting specific customers with unique needs. Primarily, the
company positions itself as a high-quality brand, which means its products feature premium
prices and are often more expensive than competing solutions. 

From a demographic perspective, the Apple target audience generally focuses on people

between the ages of 18 and 45 from all family backgrounds. 

Although Apple products appeal to a wide range of customers, the audience does skew towards
the female community, with around 66% of all Apple customers identifying as female. 

Additionally, while Apple products are user-friendly enough to be leveraged by people of

virtually all ages, younger customers are more drawn to the brand’s innovative approach. 

Apple’s marketing strategy and positioning campaigns make the company particularly appealing
to millennials, Gen Z, and other younger consumers. 

Apple targets its customer segment by tailoring products, services, and overall business
approach to appeal to the members of segment to a maximum extent.

Under the leadership of late Steve Jobs, Apple mainly used mono-segment type of positioning,
appealing to the needs and wants of a single customer segment. However, after Tim Cook
became CEO, the multinational technology company has been consistently increasing its product
ranges shifting from mono-segment type of positioning to multi-segment positioning.

As the name implies, multi-segment positioning attempts to target multiple customer segments
at the same time with different product or service packages. Accordingly, “no longer do the
barista and the corporate executive use the same iPhone — today, there are high-end models,
consumer models, and a long line of old products the company keeps around to fill every niche
and price point.

ANDROID

A Brief Intro

Android operating system is the largest installed base among various mobile platforms across
the globe. Hundreds of millions of mobile devices are powered by Android in more than 190
countries of the world. It conquered around 71% of the global market share by the end of 2021,
and this trend is growing bigger every other day. The company named Open Handset
Alliance developed Android for the first time that is based on the modified version of the Linux
kernel and other open-source software.

Google sponsored the project at initial stages and in the year 2005, it acquired the whole
company. In September 2008, the first Android-powered device was launched in the market.

Android dominates the mobile OS industry because of the long list of features it provides. It is
user-friendly, has huge community support, provides a greater extent of customization, and a
large number of companies build Android-compatible smartphones. Android becomes an
absolute set of software for all devices like tablets, wearables, set-top boxes, smart TVs,
notebooks, etc.

Features of Android

Android is a powerful open-source operating system that open-source provides immense

features and some of these are listed below.

Taking example of Samsung as a brand in order to explain the product positioning strategy
The global electronics powerhouse– Samsung began its journey as a low-tier manufacturing
brand. A strong Samsung marketing strategy revolutionized its stance in the market, making it
the No.1 smartphone producer worldwide. The tech giant ranks 4th in Forbes' list of the World's
Largest Tech Companies. A perfect blend of digital marketing and innovation has established
Samsung as a unique, high-quality brand worthy of customer loyalty.  
In terms of the positioning strategies, Samsung uses multi-segment positioning, Imitative
positioning, and Anticipatory positioning. The Imitative positioning strategy has been
particularly successful, with Samsung mimicking rival competing brands like Apple.
With Multi-segment positioning, Samsung is able to target multiple segments at once. They do
this by providing different products and services that will meet the needs of each target group.
These needs do include not only the available features and functions of the products but also
the pricing. Samsung is able to provide mobile devices that appeal to the budget constraints of
target audiences.
Samsung also adopts an Imitative positioning stance where the company adapts its products to
mimic those products of other successful brands. For example, Samsung products like the
Galaxy series offer features that are similar to Apple iPhone. The design appears similar to the
iPhone. You also have functions that are more or less the same. Samsung even adopts a similar
marketing strategy as Apple rather than coming up with a completely different approach to
marketing its products.
The Anticipatory positioning strategy of Samsung is one where they initially develop low
turnover products. However, Samsung with Anticipatory positioning, expects that their low
turnover products will eventually become high turnover products in the foreseeable future.
MIND MAP OF SAMSUNG AS A PART OF STRATEGY
One of the Samsung Galaxy’s key competitive advantages is the abundance of various built-in
features and applications that are not found in iPhones. Samsung keeps wowing their users with
new functionality: they can make animated GIFs from YouTube videos, take notes on the lock
screen, split the screen to open two apps simultaneously, and much more. At the same time,
the amount of RAM on Samsung Galaxy phones is up to two times larger than on iPhones (8 to
12 GB on Samsung Galaxy S23 vs 6 GB on iPhone 14), which, in theory, should support fast and
efficient performance of both multiple system apps and user downloads.

Both users and experts note that Samsung smartphones get obsolete very quickly: two-to-
three-year-old models get noticeably slower, keep freezing, or reboot repeatedly, and these
problems are aggravated with each update of the operating system.