Positioning Your Product/Solution

After reading Position Your Brand by David Aaker and Gary Shansby for class, I found the information insightful to what I see within healthcare innovation (Aaker & Shansby, 1982). Here are my notes and final thoughts on this.

One of the most critical decisions a company can make is its brand’s initial positioning and repositioning. This process, typically, is done ad hoc based on a few insights, which can lead to missed opportunities and markets.

When thinking about positioning, it is essential to consider segmentation, brand imaging, and focus project. Individually, each idea is strong, but a product and brand can be positioned as a leader in the industry when considered together.

The key to positioning a brand is gaining a deeper understanding of the consumers’ perception. To determine the strategy, it is better to gather too much information than make blanketed assumptions. To determine which strategy makes sense, the following steps provide an in-depth understanding of the consumer’s perspective.

Identify competitors
Determine how the competitors are perceived and educated
Determine the competitor’s position
Analyze the customer
Select the position
Monitor the position

There are six key position strategy areas to consider.

Attribute
- What attribute is a differentiator?
- To many attributes does not mean a strong position
Price – Quality
- Emphasize price and value
- It May end up as a blunt ‘low cost’ and ‘high value’ message
Use or Application
- When/how is the product used?
- This method is best when looking to expand into new markets
Product user
- Associating a product with a user or class of users
Product class
- Which category does the product/solution fit?
Competitor
- Explicit or implicit form of reference of competition
- Exploit an image to position a related product
- Customers just need to believe you are better than the competition
- Difficult to evaluate products are compared to competitors’ similar products

Main Take Away

In business, too many attributes do not mean a strong position of a brand.

Too often, while working with innovators, they rattle off a hundred different ways they can be impactful. They focus on all the opportunities and not the option that will create the most robust result. Ultimately, going too broad ends up creating mixed messaging.

I work with these innovators to identify the niche focus opportunity for their company. This focus is initially tricky for innovators; it feels as if they are turning their back on other options, it feels as if they are ignoring the growth potential.

Ultimately, this methodology leads to solid results. The niche focus may be a smaller market, but the penetration probability is much higher.

When a company goes too broad too fast, they fail. When they strategically build upon their success, they become a leader in the industry.

Citation:

Aaker, D. A., & Shansby, J. G. (1982). Positioning your product. Business Horizons, 25(3), 56–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/0007-6813(82)90130-6