Positioning in a competitive environment

Question 1

What are the 3 C’s?

Answer 1

1. Customer analysis:
   a. Market Analysis (attractiveness of overall market, viable segments)
   b. Customer needs analysis (who are the customers demographics, psychographics)
2. Competitors analysis:
   - Competitive strength and weaknesses
   - insight on opportunities for differentiation and competitive advantage
3. Company analysis:
   - Internal corporate analysis
   - identify strength in terms of current brand positioning and image, resources.

Question 2

What is market segmentation and market segment? (2)

Answer 2

1. Market segmentation: Process of grouping consumers that have common characteristics
2. Market Segment: group of consumers that have common characteristics, needs, purchasing behaviour and consumption patterns.

Question 3

What are the segmentation criteria? (4)

Answer 3

1. Demographic (age group, income, nationality, gender)
2. Psychographic (lifestyles, attitudes, personality, values and social classes)
3. Needs based (what do they want)
4. Behavioural: (light versus heavy users, decision makers, timing , individual versus groups)

Question 4

What is segmentation based on service levels? (1)

Answer 4

customers are segmented based on their willingness to give up some service elements for lower price

Question 5

What are the four targeting strategies? (4)

Answer 5

1. Market focused: Wide range of services to narrowly defined target market
2. Fully focused strategy: Limited range of services to a narrow and specific market segment. Need to understand customer purchasing practices and preferences
3. Service focused strategy: narrow range of services to fair broad market. Serves a broad customer base with largely standardised product. Strategy requires broader sales effort and investment in marketing communications.
4. Unfocused strategy: broad markets with wide range of services. Many service providers fall into this category, range in becoming a jack of all trades and master of none.

Question 6

What are the four principles of positioning strategy? (4)

Answer 6

1. Must establish position for firm or product in minds of customers
2. Positioning should be distinctive, providing one simple, consistent message
3. Position must set firm/product apart from competitors
4. A company cannot be all things to all people: must focus its effort

Question 7

What are the elements and key concepts of positioning strategy? (3)

Answer 7

Elements:

1. Segmentation:
   - segmenting service markets
   - service attributes and service levels relevant for segmentation (important versus determinant attributes, establishing service levels)
2. Targeting:
   - targeting service markets through four key focus strategies:
3. Positioning:
   - in competitive markets
   - using positioning maps to plot competitive strategy
   - developing an effective positioning strategy

Question 8

Why do marketers use positioning maps to analyse competitive strategy? (3)

Answer 8

1. great tool to visualise competitive positioning and map developments of time
2. Useful way to represent consumer perception of alternative product graphically
3. Typically confined to two attributes, but 3-D models can be used to portray positioning on three attributes simultaneously.

Question 9

What questions do marketers ask themselves that are fundamental for the principles of positioning? (6)

Answer 9

1. what does out firm stand for in the minds of current and potential customers?
2. What customers do we serve now and which ones would we like to target?
3. What is the value proposition for our current service products and market segments?
4. How does each of our service products differ from competitors?
5. How well do target customers perceive our service products as meeting their needs?
6. What changes must we make to strengthen out competitive positioning?

Question 10

How is an effective positioning strategy developed using Market analysis? (3)

Answer 10

1. Focus on overall level and trend of demand and geographic locations of demand
2. looks into size and potential of different market segments
3. understand customer needs and preferences and how they perceive the competition

Question 11

How is an effective positioning strategy developed using internal corporate and competitive analysis? (2 and 2)

Answer 11

internal corporate analysis:

1. Identify organisations resources, limitations, goals and values
2. select limited number of target segments to serve

competitive analysis:

1. Understand competitors strengths and weaknesses
2. anticipate responses to potential positioning strategies