30-04-2023

ISB PGP MM
Sessions 3 & 4
Positioning

Siddharth Shekhar Singh

Marketing Management: Course Overview

• Customer and Market Analysis (Sessions 1 & 2)
• Customer needs
1.
• Customer value
• Product market FUNDAMENTAL
• Segmentation (S) INSIGHTS &
• Targeting (T) STRATEGIC
MARKETING (STP)
• Positioning (Sessions 3 & 4)
• Positioning (P)

• Customer Management (Sessions 5) 2.

• Customer acquisition & retention SUSTAINABLE
• Customer lifetime value COMPETITIVE
• Loyalty programs ADVANTAGE

• How can you create, deliver, and extract customer value? 3.

• Designing a product/service (Sessions 6)
• Communication (Session 7) IMPLEMENTING THE
• Designing distribution channels (Session 8) MARKETING
• Pricing (Session 9) STRATEGY (4P)
• Product Adoption & The Big Picture (Session 10)

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Sessions 3 & 4: Overview

• What is Positioning?

• Different ways to positioning your product

• Traditional positioning
• New ways of positioning

• Case Discussion: Marketing Antidepressant

Examples

• You are highly innovative company high quality products

company. However, marketing research says that you are viewed
as mid-quality company. What is the issue?

• IIMs vs ISB: Ranking comparison

• Is there a problem for ISB?

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Positioning: Perceptual Map

• Represent the positions of products on a set of primary customer

needs
• Shows strategic summary of the product benefits

Positioning with respect to competitive products

within category

Positioning: Perceptual Map

Perceptual Map of Pain Relievers

Gentleness
Effectiveness: reflects needs of strong,
fast, long-lasting relief Tylenol

Gentleness: reflects perceptions that

the product would not upset one’s stomach,
cause heartburn, or result in a nervous
jittery feeling
Effectiveness

Bufferin
Bayer
Private label
Advil
aspirin

Nuprin
Anacin Excedrin

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Positioning : Product Category

• What is a product category?

• Who defines it?
• Firms achieve desired categorization by
• Product design
• Example: Red Bull comes in a “tall can” to prevent categorization with soft drinks.
• Channel
• Example: Placing product in specific sections of the retail outlet.
• Marketing communication
• Example: Gatorade referred to as liquid fuel and not juice.
• Pricing
• Example: DVR, subscription-based pricing structure communicates that DVR is a service
rather than an electronics device.

Positioning : Product Category

• How would you handle the following marketing crisis?

• Wendy’s

• Taco Bell

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Positioning the Tata Nano

• Did Tata Nano have a positioning problem at launch?

• How should the company position the Nano (i.e., competitive
frame)?
• Two-wheelers: Emphasis on comfort, safety, and status
• Low-end new cars: Lower price potentially at the expense of
perceptions of durability and reliability
• Used cars: Emphasis on being the first owner, and the status
and security this offers due to a warranty

Positioning : Product Category

• Is a product category dynamic or static?

• Evolves slowly
• Shoes: Running, walking, tennis, hiking

• Changes abruptly
• Watches: Jewelry (Swiss) vs tool (Timex) vs fashion accessory
(Swatch)

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Product Category: Characteristics

1) Category structure: How competition is organized within category?
• Hierarchy: High, middle, and low-end hotels
• Clusters: Breakfast serial category (no hierarchy)

Diffuse Well defined

Category Category
structure structure

2) Category identity: What consumers think?

• Category conventions: what is expected of products in category by consumers
• Hotel
• Category Image: Image of category
• Car sales

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Rethinking Positioning

• Traditional Positioning
• Within recognized category
• Relative to members within category

• Issues: Product Differentiation

• Short term vs. long term
• Stability of market structure allows clean STP
• Self-reinforcing competitive and consumption pattern

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Rethinking Positioning

• Traditional Positioning: Issues

Augmented Value
Augmented Value Prop
Augmented Prop
Value Prop

Expected Expected Expected Value

Value Value Prop Prop
Prop

• Firm actions  Customer expectations

• Customer expectations of products in category
• Example: Hotels

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Rethinking Positioning

• Disruptive Positioning:
• With respect to the category
• No real product innovation

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Rethinking Positioning
• Reverse Positioning: Strip away what is expected, provide some premium
benefits

X
Position in
reverse direction

Competitive Trend  Consumption Trend

Augmented Value Strip Exp

Prop
Value Prop

Expected Value Add Elements

Prop
of Aug Value
Prop
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Rethinking Positioning

1. Reverse Positioning: Strip

away what is expected,
provide some premium
benefits
• Example: IKEA, JetBlue,
Commerce Bank, cellular phones
(fit for this), Costco
• Opportunities: Service Categories
• Increasing choices: Customer
confusion
• Specialization in markets:
Customer confusion
• Can eliminate some
benefits/options
• Make transparent, simplify:
Customer empowerment

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Rethinking Positioning

2. Breakaway Positioning: Stretching category boundaries by leveraging

association with another category
• Example 1: Swatch (leveraged its association with fashion accessory category –away
from jewelry and tool sub-category)

Stretches
Category
Boundary
X

Different
Category

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Rethinking Positioning

2. Breakaway Positioning: Stretching category boundaries by leveraging

association with another category
• Example 2: Heinz Easy Squirt ketchup (ketchup use can be fun, associated with kids
art/creativity products category)

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Rethinking Positioning

2. Breakaway Positioning: Stretching category boundaries by leveraging

association with another category
• Example 3: Curad bandages (competed with Band-Aid by positioning as fashion oriented
temporary tattoo)

• Opportunities: Consumer Packaged Goods

• Change in category less confusing
• Low-cost and low-risk trial
• Firms can try different product compositions; breakaway positioning is an extension of that

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Rethinking Positioning
3. Stealth Positioning: Adopting an entirely new category
• Example: Xbox 360
• Opportunities: Categories with “psychological baggage” create opportunities
• Difficult to overcome consumer resistance to adopt products
• New technology and pharmaceutical firms prone to such problems
• Every element of marketing mix should unambiguously and coherently convey the
positioning

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• Disruptive Positioning: With respect to the

category
• Exploit category weakness

Rethinking • What type of product categories are likely

to use disruptive positioning?
Positioning • Well-defined structure
• Few competitive clusters
• Homogenous, stable, predictable

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Disruptive Positioning

Current Status

• What are the category conventions and category image?

• Are consumers dissatisfied with these conventions? (if yes, proceed)

Alternatives

• Can you create an alternative positioning that would defy category

conventions and address reasons for dissatisfaction? (if yes, proceed)

Resources

• Does your firm have enough operations and marketing competencies,

financial resources, and managerial commitment to execute strategy?

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Positioning Challenges due to

Social Media

• Traditionally: Firm  Customers

• Firm control

• Current: Customer  Customers

• Loss of control for the firm
• Issues can become big instantly
• Need active engagement
• Genuine customer centric approach
• Establish reputation and trust

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Comprehensive Example: Politics

• Needs, Market, & Segmentation before 2014

• Who are the “consumers”
• Traditional “market” and “segments”
• New “Market” and “segments”
• Category convention?
• Category Image?
• Are some “consumers/segments” dissatisfied?
• Kejriwal and Modi
• Positioning?
• Market?
• Channel?

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Questions?

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Introducing Radical Innovation to

the Consumer Market: Challenges

• Dealing with Unpredictability

• Technology
• First generation technology has many flaws
• Challenging to build a new market around the innovation
• Consumers
• Learning curve
• Example:
• Mastering a new interface (e.g., learn how to use a stylus)
• Navigate a new set of controls (e.g., program a TIVO)
• May require consumers to change their behavior patterns in order to
assimilate the new technology into their lives

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Introducing Radical Innovation to

the Consumer Market: Challenges

• How will consumers respond?

• Reject the breakthrough product
• Accept but use in unanticipated manner
• Firm’s perspective: Uncertainty
• Example:
• Nike introduces running shoe
• What is it?
• How well does it work?
• How will consumers use/interact with it?
• Will they like it?
• Radical innovation (e.g., First generation tablet PC)

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Introducing Radical Innovation to the Consumer

Market: Challenges
TENSION

Firm under pressure to release

the product to the market The fact that the product
even when it knows the is flawed increases
product is faulty so that the chances that the
the market feedback can be product will be
obtained to guide ongoing rejected by the market
product development

Crossing the chasm:

• Takes time
• Take the niche marketing approach
• Positioning

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Example:
SONY AIBO

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• http://www.time.com/time/2003/inventions/invqrio.
html
• Coolest Invention 2003
• THIS ONE'S NO DOG Inventor: Sony The Aibo, Sony's
toy robot dog, was a huge commercial hit. But it's a
quadruped so, by today's standards, no great shakes.
Meet Qrio (rhymes with curio), the company's new
SONY: Qrio bipedal "personal agent." More of a corporate
showpiece than an actual product (on the market it
would fetch about as much as a BMW), Qrio can walk
uphill, sing, dance, wave hello, wiggle its fingers and
kick a ball with surprising grace. Two digital cameras,
one behind each eye, help Qrio map a room for
future reference and recognize up to 10 different
faces. It can also converse in Japanese. Can you?

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SONY: Qrio

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ASIMO
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ASIMO
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ASIMO
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