Positioning / Repositioning
MAXIMIZING MARKET OPPORTUNITY BY REPOSITIONING YOUR PRODUCTS.
(2 minute video)
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REPOSITIONING CORRECTLY. IT'S TIME. (INTRO VIDEO.)
THE LIMITATIONS OF CONVENTIONAL APPROACHES
REINVENTING POSITIONING USING DECISION SUPPORT ENABLEMENT (DSE)
THE PHASES and STEPS
OF A DSE POSITIONING ENGAGEMENT
KEY BENEFITS
EXAMPLE CLIENTS
CONTACT / QUESTIONS
VIDEO
CENTER
CONSULTING
PLATFORMS
SOFTWARE
SOLUTIONS BY INDUSTRY
THE LIMITATIONS OF CONVENTIONAL POSITIONING APPROACHES
Why Do Contemporary Approaches to Positioning So Often Fail?:
Conventional approaches (even "best practice" approaches) to positioning fail for four reasons:
- It isn't tried.
-
The
data
collected
is incomplete or inadequate
. The measurement system:
- Misses important drivers of positioning.
- Doesn't determine repositioning thresholds - how much improvement or differentiation is needed to get a prospect or customer to a more attractive position.
- Fails to recognize that, psychometrically, the average customer highly values only 3-4 key drivers yielding only 25 or so key drivers across all segments - not hundreds of drivers.
- Doesn't eliminate or factor analyze similar drivers of positioning to assure independence of the positioning drivers.
-
The
decision support
system
for positioning is absent or inadequate
.
It:
- Doesn't allow "what-iffing" because it hasn't developed an optimal strategy map - a brandscape where all the products and features are visualized.
- Doesn't quantify how far you can move your product - realistically.
- Doesn't identify the brands that have weak vs. strong brand images.
- Doesn't explore your competitive space (brandscape) for threats.
- Doesn't automatically test millions of repositioning strategies and find the optimum strategy that moves your product or service into unoccupied niches...at the lowest cost.
-
The
consulting firm
:
- Imagines that they are your equity partner - and they charge you that way.
- Gives you the fish (the answer)...but not the fishing pole (the decision support system).
REINVENTING POSITIONING USING DECISION SUPPORT ENABLEMENT (DSE)
What if you could leap-frog the limitations just listed above and:
- Visualize your competitive space more accurately than ever before?
- Clarify the positioning of BOTH your competitors AND the market's key features?
- Explore your competitive space (brandscape) for threats?
- Quantify how far you can move your product (your competitive volume?)
- Perform simulations - move into unoccupied areas on the brandscape?
- Identify how to best penetrate into areas occupied by weaker competitors?
- Move your product/brand away from stronger or no net gain competitors?
-
Test millions of potential change strategies and find the strategy that:
- Minimizes threats from the competition?
- Minimizes cost to arrive at the most advantageous position?
- Maximizes market share opportunity at the lowest cost?
Decision Support-Enabled Positioning achieves all these outcomes and more. The result? Far more accurate and cost effective positioning strategies...at a far lower cost. Delivered you way. That's enablement.
PHASES AND STEPS OF A DSE POSITIONING ENGAGEMENT
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KEY BENEFITS (Place your pointer over the benefits to see the short description.)
Our positioning practice leverages PositionSolve™, our positioning decision support software. PositionSolve™ is not only visual (it compresses relevant information into a 3-D strategy map) it is dynamic. That is, PositionSolve™ lets the strategist "what-if" with the characteristics of any product to see how those changes vary the positioning, and preference of that product.
One of PositionSolve™'s primary strengths is optimization. Above is an actual real time screen capture from PositionSolve™'s run optimizer. Notice first that PositionSolve™ is fast. 250-500 Discriminant Analysis models were run in about 10 seconds on a modern laptop. But more importantly, notice that the correct classification percentage increased from 50% to over 75% by transforming the predictors and eliminating those that do not meet optimization criteria. Optimization...is PositionSolve™'s middle name!
PositionSolve™'s dynamic capabilities include automated and directed product movement on the strategy map. In directed movement the strategist "drags" a product to a new position using competitive repositioning (CR). In CR the system mathematically solves for all the possible ways to arrive at that new location. In automated movement the system runs millions of changes to a given product to discover its competitive niche (CN). See the competitive repositioning (CR) and competitive niche (CN) benefit analysis descriptions below.
PositionSolve™ allows the strategist to understand which competitors are truly closest to one another when ALL the dimensions of the data are considered rather than just the primary "mappable" dimensions (which DO, by the way express the maximum information).
PositionSolve™ allows the strategist to understand the limits of any product's competitive movement given that only one attribute is changed at a time. To understand what happens when two or more attributes are changed, inspect Competitive Niche Analysis (described below.).
PositionSolve™ visualizes whether the brand image of any given product is tight (focused) or diffuse. It does this by plotting respondents themselves on the competitive space and visualizing how tightly they cluster around their respective brands. Larger spheres indicate a more diffuse, less clear brand image, while smaller spheres indicate a tight, clear brand image.
PositionSolve™ performs competitive niche analysis by running hundreds of thousands of simulations for each product to see how "far" it can move from its current positioning. The limits of a product's movement define its realistic product niche. When products do NOT overlap they are in isolated niches.
PositionSolve™ allows either value, perceptual or preference-based segments to be overlaid on the product space. These types of segments can be developed by 1) standard cluster or factor analysis methods or 2) by using the attribute clustering capability within PositionSolve™. The red spheres above are attribute clustering segments overlaid on the brand space. The smaller colored spheres are the actual brands in the brand space.
This capability lies at the heart of PositionSolve™! Competitive repositioning allows the strategist to choose a desired location for his or her product, choose which attributes to contribute to the solution and PositionSolve™ will test thousands (or even millions) of ways to arrive at that new positioning. (The depth of the analysis depends upon the number of attributes chosen.)
The short course? Positioning initiatives RARELY result in break out positioning insights. Why? Because:
1) The data collected is incomplete or inadequate.
2) The mathematics does not develop a truly optimal strategy map - a brandscape where all the products and features are visualized.
3) The decision support analytics doesn't automatically test millions of repositioning strategies...and find the strategy that move into areas of unoccupied demand...at the lowest cost.
Our positioning practice has six steps - with each step designed to either acquire new generation data or analyze that data in new, powerful ways. The result? A truly optimized strategy map or brandscape. This is the next generation of what historically has been termed perceptual mapping.
Visual and Dynamic
Generates Optimal Strategy Maps
Performs "What-iffing" Simulation (Repositioning and Simulation)
Finds Closest Competitors / Risks
Finds Limits of Competitive Movement
Quantifies Brand Image Diffusion
Performs Competitive Niche Analysis
Overlays Segments on the Space
Performs Competitive Repositioning
Positioning. We Tackled Real Problems.
Positioning: The Resulting Steps
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EXAMPLE CLIENTS
Financial Services
We have deployed positioning studies for five of the top 20 U.S. banks, mutual fund companies and investment houses.
Retail and Other
We have deployed national positionaing studies for leading retail, healthcare and consulting companies.
Financial Services
Retail and Selected Other Firms