MGT 8803 Marketing Module Week 12: Positioning &
Consumer Behavior Insights with Complete Solutions |
Graded A+ | New 2025-2026 Update
MGT 8803 MARKETING MODULE
Week 12 TRANSCRIPTS
1. Positioning
>> Welcome to the lesson dedicated to the topics of positioning and differentiation. Within this
lesson, I'll address the following five objectives. Define positioning, discuss the components of a
positioning statement, describe perceptual mapping, define differentiation and discuss examples
of differentiation strategies. Firms often use promotion to help position how a marketing mix
meets target customer's specific needs.
Marketers can differentiate the marketing mix in order to meet customer needs better than
competitors and build a competitive advantage. Let's look at this more closely. Before beginning
the process of considering differentiation and positioning, it's helpful to ground ourselves in a
basic reminder of consumer behavior. Customer value is a result of the customer's perceived
benefits minus the customer's perceived costs.
And remember, these benefits as well as the cost may or may not be tangible. Elements such as
time, convenience and benevolence, may be emotional responses the effect behaviors and the
perception of value. It may seem obvious to say or realize that it's the customer that determines
perceived value.
But it can be far more difficult to capture, quantify and weight the various components that
translate to value analysis. This is a highly simplified example of how a computer laptop retailer
might leverage customer insights through market research, to evaluate user segments. To
determine what brands to carry and target for these segments.
As you can see in the table at the top here, three user segments have been identified and three
key attributes are being evaluated for each segment. Each customer is asked to evaluate the
attributes. In this example, they are features, ease of use and easiness to learn. And to score each
one on a scale of importance, from one to ten.
,Once this information is captured, the organization can create sub-segments and align marketing
efforts to provide the best options to the consumer. In the far right hand, column we can see the
retailer has selected brands and models of laptops that are the best fit for these sub-segments. As
analytics oriented students, this will be your domain.
Many of you will help support marketers by thinking through scenarios and permutations that are
far more complex than this example. Let's look at a form of definition of positioning. It is
defined as how customers think about proposed and/or present brands in a market. Marketing
research techniques are designed to collect information about consumer perceptions and
determine differences among competing products in the mind of the consumer.
Let's consider an example for a moment. What do you think about the Mercedes brand and its
personal line of vehicles? Take a few seconds to consider this. Some of you have positive
perceptions, some of you may have negative perceptions and some of you may have neutral
perceptions of the brand.
What is important to recognize is that your perceptions are not necessarily about being right or
wrong. In fact, I'm guessing many of you have either a positive or negative perception of the
brand, but don't have personal experience with the brand. Understanding this from the brand
standpoint is super important because it highlights the significance of actively pursuing ways to
shape consumers' perceptions, even when they have not experienced the brand's offerings first
hand.
What's shown here is some data from the 2019 Consumer Reports rankings of luxury midsize
cars, which indicates the Lincoln Continental as the highest Consumer Reports rated luxury
midsize car. As we can see, the highest-rated Mercedes within this category is in the 11th
position overall. The purpose of this is not for me to alter your perceptions, or to convince you
Consumer Reports is the right resource to influence your buying decisions.
What I'm re-enforcing, however, is the psychology and emotion involved in positioning.
Consumers do not always make purely rational decisions and arguably, Mercedes has done a
fantastic job of differentiating its family of personal automobiles, to convince many consumers
to buy their product. The positioning statement provides marketing managers with a strategic
direction.
, This is a template, an example application. Marketing managers often develop a positioning
statement to concisely identify the firm's target market, product type, points of differentiation and
the main reasons a customer should buy a product. Lets look at an example from Mountain Dew.
The brand's target market is young adult males who identify with excitement, adventure and fun.
This might different from a market segment that is older and more health conscious. Branding
and marketing would almost certainly avoid serious or conservative themes. So here, for this
positioning statement, it reads, for 16 to 24-year-old males who embrace excitement, adventure,
and fun, Mountain Dew of all carbonated soft drinks, delivers great taste that exhilarates like no
other because Mountain Dew is energizing, thirst-quenching, and has a one-of-a-kind citrus
flavor.
As I've mentioned, positioning is a function of company actions, but it's ultimately determined by
the customers' perceptions. This diagram shows the output of a computer program that performs
positioning analysis based on market research data. Two attributes of soap that account for the
greatest difference in consumer perceptions are the degree to which the soap is a deodorant soap
and the degree to which the soap is a moisturizing soap.
Customer segments can be determined through market research to evaluate consumer responses.
The circles shown here refer to the size of market attracted through a combination of attributes.
The closer that any two circles are to each other, the more similar those brands are in the minds
of the consumer.
Market research can also be leveraged to understand how consumers feel about existing brands
and also plotted on the perceptual map. This allows the marketer to assess opportunities, to shift
their brand's positioning and/or to identify potential opportunities for launching a new brand. For
example, in this chart here, we can see that Lava brand is really sitting out in an area where there
is not a lot of market research responses from consumers.
The balance of that is that we do see some activity in the segment that's labelled number 6 as
well as the label of number 7, which may be opportunities for Lava to shift its brand, or for a
new soap brand to be created to serve customers' needs. So positioning studies can be part of a
broader analysis, because they identify important attributes of the product offerings in a market.
They identify what offerings are likely to appeal to segment and provide a basis for changing the
marketing mix, should a marketer decide to reposition a product. Now that we've discussed
Consumer Behavior Insights with Complete Solutions |
Graded A+ | New 2025-2026 Update
MGT 8803 MARKETING MODULE
Week 12 TRANSCRIPTS
1. Positioning
>> Welcome to the lesson dedicated to the topics of positioning and differentiation. Within this
lesson, I'll address the following five objectives. Define positioning, discuss the components of a
positioning statement, describe perceptual mapping, define differentiation and discuss examples
of differentiation strategies. Firms often use promotion to help position how a marketing mix
meets target customer's specific needs.
Marketers can differentiate the marketing mix in order to meet customer needs better than
competitors and build a competitive advantage. Let's look at this more closely. Before beginning
the process of considering differentiation and positioning, it's helpful to ground ourselves in a
basic reminder of consumer behavior. Customer value is a result of the customer's perceived
benefits minus the customer's perceived costs.
And remember, these benefits as well as the cost may or may not be tangible. Elements such as
time, convenience and benevolence, may be emotional responses the effect behaviors and the
perception of value. It may seem obvious to say or realize that it's the customer that determines
perceived value.
But it can be far more difficult to capture, quantify and weight the various components that
translate to value analysis. This is a highly simplified example of how a computer laptop retailer
might leverage customer insights through market research, to evaluate user segments. To
determine what brands to carry and target for these segments.
As you can see in the table at the top here, three user segments have been identified and three
key attributes are being evaluated for each segment. Each customer is asked to evaluate the
attributes. In this example, they are features, ease of use and easiness to learn. And to score each
one on a scale of importance, from one to ten.
,Once this information is captured, the organization can create sub-segments and align marketing
efforts to provide the best options to the consumer. In the far right hand, column we can see the
retailer has selected brands and models of laptops that are the best fit for these sub-segments. As
analytics oriented students, this will be your domain.
Many of you will help support marketers by thinking through scenarios and permutations that are
far more complex than this example. Let's look at a form of definition of positioning. It is
defined as how customers think about proposed and/or present brands in a market. Marketing
research techniques are designed to collect information about consumer perceptions and
determine differences among competing products in the mind of the consumer.
Let's consider an example for a moment. What do you think about the Mercedes brand and its
personal line of vehicles? Take a few seconds to consider this. Some of you have positive
perceptions, some of you may have negative perceptions and some of you may have neutral
perceptions of the brand.
What is important to recognize is that your perceptions are not necessarily about being right or
wrong. In fact, I'm guessing many of you have either a positive or negative perception of the
brand, but don't have personal experience with the brand. Understanding this from the brand
standpoint is super important because it highlights the significance of actively pursuing ways to
shape consumers' perceptions, even when they have not experienced the brand's offerings first
hand.
What's shown here is some data from the 2019 Consumer Reports rankings of luxury midsize
cars, which indicates the Lincoln Continental as the highest Consumer Reports rated luxury
midsize car. As we can see, the highest-rated Mercedes within this category is in the 11th
position overall. The purpose of this is not for me to alter your perceptions, or to convince you
Consumer Reports is the right resource to influence your buying decisions.
What I'm re-enforcing, however, is the psychology and emotion involved in positioning.
Consumers do not always make purely rational decisions and arguably, Mercedes has done a
fantastic job of differentiating its family of personal automobiles, to convince many consumers
to buy their product. The positioning statement provides marketing managers with a strategic
direction.
, This is a template, an example application. Marketing managers often develop a positioning
statement to concisely identify the firm's target market, product type, points of differentiation and
the main reasons a customer should buy a product. Lets look at an example from Mountain Dew.
The brand's target market is young adult males who identify with excitement, adventure and fun.
This might different from a market segment that is older and more health conscious. Branding
and marketing would almost certainly avoid serious or conservative themes. So here, for this
positioning statement, it reads, for 16 to 24-year-old males who embrace excitement, adventure,
and fun, Mountain Dew of all carbonated soft drinks, delivers great taste that exhilarates like no
other because Mountain Dew is energizing, thirst-quenching, and has a one-of-a-kind citrus
flavor.
As I've mentioned, positioning is a function of company actions, but it's ultimately determined by
the customers' perceptions. This diagram shows the output of a computer program that performs
positioning analysis based on market research data. Two attributes of soap that account for the
greatest difference in consumer perceptions are the degree to which the soap is a deodorant soap
and the degree to which the soap is a moisturizing soap.
Customer segments can be determined through market research to evaluate consumer responses.
The circles shown here refer to the size of market attracted through a combination of attributes.
The closer that any two circles are to each other, the more similar those brands are in the minds
of the consumer.
Market research can also be leveraged to understand how consumers feel about existing brands
and also plotted on the perceptual map. This allows the marketer to assess opportunities, to shift
their brand's positioning and/or to identify potential opportunities for launching a new brand. For
example, in this chart here, we can see that Lava brand is really sitting out in an area where there
is not a lot of market research responses from consumers.
The balance of that is that we do see some activity in the segment that's labelled number 6 as
well as the label of number 7, which may be opportunities for Lava to shift its brand, or for a
new soap brand to be created to serve customers' needs. So positioning studies can be part of a
broader analysis, because they identify important attributes of the product offerings in a market.
They identify what offerings are likely to appeal to segment and provide a basis for changing the
marketing mix, should a marketer decide to reposition a product. Now that we've discussed
