Have you ever wondered why a product speaks for itself? It almost looks like as if it is telling you what to expect from it in terms of features or benefits associated with it. This is what is called product positioning or perceptual mapping. After the process of segmenting the market is done and the target audience has been decided for a particular product or brand, the task that comes next into action is the perceptual mapping of the product. This task is completed on the basis of what a customer wants and expect from a particular product. In Marketing every strategy revolves around making a customer feel satisfied with the services offered by a product. This makes a customer’s opinion about what makes the services associated with a product ‘a good service’ an important point to consider while framing a strategy for product positioning in the market.
What Exactly is Product Positioning/Perceptual Mapping?
Product positioning which is also known as Perceptual mapping involves the process of creating semantic representations that reflect how a company’s products or services compare to those of the competitors on dimensions most important to the success of the industry. A company targeting specific audience groups uses perceptual mapping to meet the needs and wants of that group.
How to Develop a Perceptual Map for Your Product?
Let’s work on the overall process of creating a Perceptual map in detail:
The first job involves identifying and selecting key features that differentiate your products or services from other products or services available in the market. Various identified features could be Quality, Price or Taste.
Identified features are then plotted on a two- dimensional perceptual map, with specified criteria on each axis.
This process gives you a four- quadrant matrix which can eventually be used to plot major competitor’ products and services.
Finally, Identify the vacant areas or the niches in the perceptual map where your company’s products or service offerings would be most competitive in the defined target market.
Based on the information extracted you can create a marketing plan to position your company’s products and services in the market.
The process seems to be easy, but it requires lot of dedicated and focused effort on behalf of the marketing team. A correct positioning of the product in the market creates the required perceived image of the product or brand in the eyes of the consumers.
The famous Cola War of the 1970’s and 1980’s era is a classic example of perceptual mapping strategy. Pepsi used perceptual mapping to find the niche area in the existing Cola Market. Pepsi realized that consumers were actually bored of the regular Cola Drink and there was a vacant space on the perceptual map which could be filled with the introduction of a new product that would give the perception of: ‘better taste’ and ‘a young and enthusiastic image’.
Pepsi used two measures to fill in the space:
It used “New Generation Image’ advertising that used slogans like ‘The Choice of the New Generation’. This advertising focused on younger generations and the effort revolved around positioning Pepsi as a young, energetic and innovative brand in the market. The strategy focused on repositioning Coke as an old, tired and boring brand in the market.
The results were amazing, as the new perceptual map was like this:
Perceptual Map
Rules For Product Positioning
The effort should involve finding a vacant space or a niche in the market, which involves the sector which is not being served currently.
Use a different strategy for different segments. A strategy that is successful in one segment, cannot necessarily be successful in the other.
When there are more than two competitors in the market, do not position your product or service in the middle of the map, as in such a situation the middle position does not clearly define the distinguished characteristics of a product.
What is a Good Positioning Strategy?
Achieving Customer delight is the utmost objective of most of the companies. A good positioning strategy has two main features:
It distinguishes the product clearly from the competitors’’ product in the market.
It promises to deliver less service than expected by the customer.
This means that the right strategy is ‘Underpromise and Overdeliver’. A company has to set certain expectations while positioning the product in the market and then work towards exceeding the set expectations. This eventually leads to customer delight and satisfaction which is the ultimate goal of every company.
A Perceptual mapping or product positioning strategy leads to creating the right image for the product or service in the market. A company should identify the differentiating features of its product or service before creating the positioning strategy, as it helps the company to set the right expectations for the product which can be communicated to the customers through the use of various digital and traditional marketing channels.
