Question

if you successfully position your product as per your positioning plan, it is sure that you will succees in acheiveing your marketing objectives? if you are not sure what could be the reasons behind this failure,discuss any two such reason?

Answer 1

Positioning can go wrong sometimes and that prevents a company from realising the full potential of the products and fulfill marketing objectives from it. The probable reasons behind such failure might be

(i) Not involving the customers in the positioning strategy. The company must know the customers inside out before it takes a positioning stance. The customers are complex set of people, each one has its own aspirations. assumptions, perceptions and viewpoints about a product. However, for a product to be positioned, a deep study of brand persona is essential. Getting them involved makes it more certain that the company's approach is more likley to strike a cord with the customers. There are numerous examples in business where the positioning strategy went wrong because the company failed to understand the needs, aspirations and perceptions of customers, and a good product failed.

(ii) The organisation's buy in and readiness for positioning. This happens when the organisation's processes don't support the process of positioning. The example is a company which makes run of the mill clothing decides to produce a luxury clothing line. The technical capability is not equalled by the other departments such as design, marketing, distribution and customer service. This means that though the product and positioning are right, the designs, marketing, channel management and other support processes are not able to attract the target audience as expected, because they see it as a maker of "people's clothes" and not the luxury clothmaker, and their assumption is strengthened when they see a bad marketing campaign or an untrained salesman selling the garment which is priced at $1000.