Essay Sample on Brand Positioning: Own a Conceptual Place in Customers' Minds

Introduction

Brand positioning is a strategy in which corporates carefully choose a specific target customer group, recognize the options the customers have, and pitch a sales line with the aim of owning a conceptual place in the target customer's mind (Sengupta, 2005). It involves magnifying the major benefit that comes with the company's products and must be relevant to customers' way of life to promote competitive distinctiveness. The positioning statement must be unambiguous, simple, and captivating to leave a long-lasting impression. The company must consider the emotional and rational complexities of customers' minds to spur action. Since brand positioning is the ultimate guide to all that an organization does, this paper describes the strategy's usefulness in marketing decision making.

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The other popular marketing strategies include promotions, pricing, packaging, distribution, and competition. For brand positioning, the aim is to make customers relate to a desirable quality when referring to our brand (Ries & Trout, 2001). For example, Volvo's positioning statement is, "For upscale American families, Volvo is the family automobile that offers maximum safety." It means that the company aims to make customers relate Volvo with safety, which is a desirable link, and conceptually sets the company apart.

Companies must always strive to be what the brand promise claims in real life. Any disengagement between the two positions threatens profits. It is about defending the position of the business in the customer's mind in relation to its competitors and reinforcing the positive perceptions about the company. Positioning can be done on three levels of the product; its attributes, benefits, or beliefs, and values about it (Mcghie, 2012). Branding on attributes means emphasizing the basic qualities of a product such as sweetness of a burger or the power or sportiness of a car. This level of branding usually fails to create a considerable emotional connection to the company because most competitors may easily copy the descriptions.

Positioning on benefits means amplifying what the attributes of a product give the customer. For example, the burger company can claim that their burgers' sweetness leads to instant joy and uplift of moods. To build the most influential brand, however, companies will choose to brand on beliefs and values. This level of positioning reaches out to the target customers from an emotional front, taking them on an in-depth journey that spurs excitement, surprise, and passion around the product (Mcghie, 2012). The company must always strive to remain honest and compassionate about the brand promise.

For a business leader, the positioning statement offers a clearer decision-making pathway and makes it possible to collect most of the data needed for strategy implementation and decision making. With a compelling positioning strategy, the leader easily determines what to do because they know who to do it for and who to it better than. Positioning makes a promise to customers about a way of doing business that they cannot easily get from competitors. The awareness thus makes it easier to act in the face of a new opportunity or challenge. It is hence through positioning that C-level executives can link the company's deliverables and customer needs with the available market options to create a selling opportunity.

For example, Volvo executives may hold a meeting to deliberate on the purchase of new equipment, hiring more qualified engineers, setting up a new station in another State, and reevaluating the relationships with their various contractors, terminating others. The decisions promise to generate more revenue but must be vetted against the company's brand position-assuring safety for upscale American families. The final decision must be one that will make more families believe that safety resides at Volvo. The decision must also improve the company's ability to offer safety to families who choose Volvo cars. Volvo must live up to its safety promise in their target's mind.

Positioning gives a clear direction to reach innovative decisions that put every effort to deliver the promise. It makes it easier to dramatically pass the message to target customers to market a specific belief. It also makes partnership decisions easy to make by merely referencing the offers against your brand promise (Shimp, 2010). For instance, at Volvo, if the partnership will not promote safety for families, the decision is NO. The ultimate benefit of positioning is that it helps in making marketing decisions when devising ways of spreading the news to customers. Using a single reference statement, the company becomes easy to deal with, to understand, and to market.

On the ground, customers make buying decisions based on all the marketing theories, but their beliefs, attitudes, and feelings about a company usually vest a veto power over other factors. They will easily order an item form a company they trust, love, or which they feel is easy to work with without paying much attention to the price (if it is not outrageously expensive) (Shimp, 2010). Such purchase decisions are commonplace when airline companies need a new plane and are to choose between Being or Airbus. A company needs to be consistent in its delivery of promises since the emotions usually grow out of past experiences for return customers

For existing companies, reevaluating the brand positioning should involve detailed research of the current customers' perceptions about your brand, how they relate you with your competitors, and the influencers of their purchase decisions. The company must listen to the garnered feedback and reinforce how they would like a customer to think when they hear or think of the company's name. The whole organization then needs to act by consistently following through all the recommendations (Anandan, 2009). It is a process that takes time to win the battle for your customers' minds ultimately. The organization should define, implement, and fully deliver on the brand promise.

Business leaders who develop a clear positioning statement have all the power to steer the company in the desired direction without waste of resources and time, getting destructed by competitors' antics, or running out of data to back decisions up. This assurance makes the business more sustainable.

References

Anandan, C., 2009. Product management, New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Education.

Mcghie, A., 2012. Brand is a four letter word: positioning and the real art of marketing, Charleston, South Carolina: Advantage.

Ries, A., & Trout, J., 2001. Positioning, New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing. https://public.ebookcentral.proquest.com/choice/publicfullrecord.aspx?p=4960091.

Sengupta, S., 2005. Brand positioning: strategies for competitive advantage, New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill.

Shimp, T. A., 2010. Advertising, promotion, and other aspects of integrated marketing communications, Mason: OH, South-Western Cengage Learning.