Product Positioning Options: Positioning involves those decisions and activities intended to create and maintain certain concepts of the firm’s product in the customer’s mind. Differentiation refers to your ability to separate yourself and your product from that of your competitors. It is key to building and maintaining a competitive advantage. A value proposition is the set of benefits and values the company promises to deliver to a customer need that must be satisfied.
The Cluster of Satisfaction Concern
- Products are problem-solving tools
- People buy products if they fulfill a problem-solving need
- Today’s better educated and more demanding customers are seeking a cluster of satisfaction
Product Positioning Options
- Applies to both new and existing products
- May be necessary to reposition products several times
- Salespeople have an important and expanding role in differentiating products
- A direct and personalized form of communication must be used
- Mass Advertising often fails to position a complex product
- Position new versus established products
- A position with price strategies
- A position with value added
New Product Development (50/50 chance of success failure)
Sales become key and distribution crucial. A price class defines a Market
Value-added product-selling strategy is enhanced when based on a comprehensive analysis of the competitive situation including product, its attributes, and the benefits it offers. Ideal Inventory turn is 52 times a year-once a week. 26 times a year is good
Product Life Cycle Stages
Target Rated Points (T.R.P.) are how many times targeted market sees various ads and promotions. Anything over a 100 week is pretty good. Every company that has a product or service
Every market has a product lifecycle and category development
New Emerging Products
- Develop new levels of expectations
- Change habits
- Establish new standards
- Build desire for the product
- Focus on creating new markets
Mature and Well-established Products
- Emphasize Brand Superiority
- Emphasize Company Superiority
- Point out unique features
- Provide Outstanding customer service
- Focus on sustaining existing market share
Selling Products with a Price Strategy
- Pricing decisions must be made at each stage of the life cycle
- Setting price can be a complex process
- The first step is to determine pricing objectives
- Some firms set prices to maximize profits
- Others set a market share objective
- Pricing strategies reflect the position of a product in the market place
- Price according to market and Franchise
Consequences of Low Price Tactics
- High/low involvement buyers?
- High emotional involvement with a brand: New Task and Modified Re-buy
- Low-involvement buyers focus on price: Rebuy
- Importance of quality?
- Role of price-quality relationship in sale
- Importance of service?
- Many buyers particularly b2b, ranks service above absolute price
- C.L.V.-Customer Lifetime Value
How do we add value? Information sharing and Guarantee Warranty
Value Creation Investments for….
- Transactional Buyers-involves emphasis on eliminating costs, avoiding delays
- Consultative Buyers-Involves custom-tailored solutions to deliver more real benefits
- Strategic Alliance Buyers-requires leveraging the full assets of the company; investments go well beyond the sales force
Customer Strategy is defined as a carefully conceived plan that results in maximum customer responsiveness. One major dimension of this strategy is to achieve a better understanding of the customer’s buying needs and motives
Develop a customer strategy by understanding the buying process, understanding buyer behavior, and developing a prospect base.
Organizational Buying
- New Task Buy: Salespeople rely on consultative selling skills
- Straight Rebuy: Salespeople constantly
Consumer Buying
- Habitual buying situations
- Variety-seeking buying situations
- Complex buying situations
Achieving Alignment
- The buying process is a systematic series of actions, or a series of defined repeatable steps intended, to achieve a result
- Salespeople need to be clear on how decisions are being made
- Acquire specific information rather
Buyer Resolution Theory
Why should I buy?
What should I buy?
Where should I buy?
What is a fair price?
When should I buy?
Customer Strategy Model Figure 8.5
Basic Needs Maslow
- Physiological: food, shelter
- Security: free from danger
- Social: Identification with social groups, friendship
- Esteem: Desire to feel worthy in the eyes of others
- Self-Actualization: Need for mastery, self-fulfillment
Group Influences Figure 8.7
Buying Motives
- A buying motive is an aroused need, drive, or desire that stimulates behavior to satisfy the aroused need
- It’s helpful to discover the DMB (Dominant Buying Motive)
- Four basic motive types-emotional, rational, patronage, and product
Emotional Motives are acts due to passion or sentiment. Emotional appeals are common too. If two products are identical, the salesperson that “connects” has the advantage.
Rational Motives are acts of reason or judgment. It is relatively free or emotion. Salespeople gather, interpret, and disseminate customer-specific information
Patronage and Product Motives
Patronage
- Buy from a particular firm
- Past experience positive
- Relevant elements superior service, product selection, competent sales stuff
Product
The buyer believes one product is superior to others. Preferences for specific brands, quality, price, design engineering
PRODUCT POSITIONING OPTIONS