Positioning les brands

Brand Positioning is how a product appears in relation to other products in the market.

Here are the 5 main factors that go into defining a brand position as defined by Susan Gunelius, President and CEO of Keysplash Creative.

 

1. Brand Attributes

What the brand delivers through features and benefits to consumers.

2. Consumer Expectations

What consumers expect to receive from the brand.

3.  Competitor attributes

What the other brands in the market offer through features and benefits to consumers.

4.  Price

An easily quantifiable factor – Your prices vs. your competitors’ prices.

5.  Consumer perceptions

The perceived quality and value  of your brand in consumer’s minds (i.e., does your brand offer the cheap solution, the good value for the money solution, the high-end, high-price tag solution, etc.?).

 

Brands can be positioned against competing brands on a perceptual map.  The maps I’ve seen and used in class usually have four sections on the x/y axis.  You place a dot where you think that brand fits in relation to Price (high vs. low) and Quality (high vs. low).  They’re effective as a starting point for visually positioning your brand against others, but they leave out some important variables like social or environmental forays.  Or how family friendly they are.  Or if they’re bad-ass.  Any of the more detailed perceptual maps get immediately confusing to me, though.  I’d much prefer to position my brand with a good old fashioned sentence or two.