Positioning -- two distinct meanings!

There are two kinds of positioning:

1) Market Positioning

Market positioning involves making a thorough investigation of the marketplace, including customers and competitors, combining that with your strengths as a business to decide how you want to compete.

2) Psychological Positioning

Psychological Positioning involves attempting to manipulate the way that potential customers think about your offering.: It is imperative that the psychological position attempted be supported by the marketing mix chosen for the market position above.; It is usually done in terms of some product attributes, but may be done by usage occasion or any other benefit that consumers might seek. It might be done purely with communications, or it may involve changing other parts of the marketing mix.; The position you end up in is not under your control, but is a synergetic function of the customer's psychological processes regarding all available information about the marketplace.

Once the target market and the desired market positioning is identified, perceptual positions of competitors should be established.

A decision must then be made as how to attempt to have ones own offering perceived by customers.

To the extent that you can communicate with any part of the marketing mix, Psycological Positioning can be accomplished through ANY part of the marketing mix, but is most often discussed in terms of the chosen advertising message, medium, and vehicle.

The most important things to remember about positioning are that it is a two part process and that the perceptions of consumers are not completely under your control.

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