ABSTRACT
Positioning, a term made popular by Ries and Trout in 1972 with Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, is defined as designing and executing a marketing strategy to form a particular mental representation of a product or brand in the consumer’s mind (Peter & Olson, 1993). Because these representations comprise an array of image and characteristic associations, positioning offers marketers the potential to meaningfully differentiate their brand in the marketplace, because it provides consumers with reasons to choose the brand. But identifying the right combination of images and characteristics to associate with a brand is an extremely difficult task given the number of possible variations that exist and the competitive pressures in the marketplace. Consider the automobile industry, for example. Potential positioning classifications include quality, technical sophistication, driving performance, style, luxury, utility, value, and even popularity. Each broad classification contains additional subtypes as numerous as the car models themselves. The critical question for the marketer is which positioning is best? How can a brand be positioned, or repositioned, to motivate more consumers to purchase?
