Product positioning strategies determine the success that your company will have or not have. The strategies you use for your product positioning have the power to make your break your business.
Product positioning strategies can be developed based on the market analysis done using the product attributes, product class, available competition, product usages, and consumers / end users demographics.
The end objective behind all product positioning strategies is to create a lasting image in the minds of the consumers and end-users.
1. Class-Based Product Positioning Strategy:
Class-based product positioning strategy involves promoting products the lie in the same classification and are related but are not exactly in the same category. Instant breakfast cereals are pushed together with milk powder supplements. Freeze dried coffee beans pushed with instant coffee and regular coffee is a good example.
Quaker Oats products are promoted as a healthy dietary breakfast meal substitute, dominates the breakfast cereal market along with Kellogg’s breakfast cereal products.
Sales tactics and sales promotions are the main drivers of this type of product promotion strategy.
2. Usage Based Product Positioning Strategy:
Many players after operating in the same class for a long time start expanding their operations and diversifying using this strategy to reach out to the large customer base, which is earlier not a part of their product repertoire. Usage based product positioning strategy can be used for this.
A classic example is that of Cadbury chocolates in India, which after years of being in the chocolate business, repositioned its existing products in the Indian sweetmeats sector, which is a flourishing business in itself, especially during the festival times. Numerous festivals are celebrated in India where sweetmeats are lavishly distributed. By repositioning Cadbury chocolates as a sweetmeat, the company changed the entire marketplace and is today the most preferred sweets to be distributed on festivals.
3. Consumer Benefits Based Product Positioning Strategy:
The benefits of a product can be numerous and coming up with novel usages of the products creates a different type of strategy, which sometimes ends up creating a brand new market share for the company. India’s Fair & Lovely cream is one such product, which not only positioned itself as a fairness cream but also ended up creating a new segment altogether, which is still a dominant segment, with several new players coming in. This strategy was initiated with the identification of a deep consumer need for fair skin
4. Pricing Based Product Positioning Strategy:
Pricing as a positioning strategy is used quite frequently because the price can be the best customer puller. Earlier the products by the international garments brands were perceived to be high end in nature and the general perception was that they were only for the high-end customers as they could pay the high price for them.
Many of these companies like Marks and Spencer’s have reduced their pricing to become at par with the Indian brands like Van Heusen and Louis Philippe. This strategy has not only made the products accessible to the style-conscious Indians but also given considerable competition to the local premium brands.
5. Problem and Solution-Based Product Positioning Strategy:
There are some age-old companies, which have been associated with certain niche categories only. One such company is Johnson & Johnson, which is associated with child and baby care products.
When Johnson & Johnson identified a market need that emerged with changing weather conditions, where people wanted to wash hair daily, they positioned their baby shampoo as a mild shampoo and positioned the same product as a shampoo for adult usage also.
6. Cultural Symbols Based Product Positioning Strategy:
A classic example of this positioning strategy is Air India with its logo depicting the Maharaja. This logo was created with the age-old cultural practice of Indian households, where guests are treated with the greatest honor, kind of reserved for the Gods. Air India was supposed to be treating its guests the same way. This cultural symbolism for product positioning can be a rare strategy but it also has a very strong memorability factor.
7. Competition Based Product Positioning Strategy:
Many products are positioned based on the competitors’ positioning strategies. Using celebrity endorsements for different product segments is a strategy that is purely based on the competitors’ market positioning strategies.
Positioning strategy works with the goals and objectives so choose wisely, and change the strategy when you need to.
