Ask ten shoppers: Stop ten shoppers on the High Street and ask them about bread in the town. Most say the same things. The supermarket is the cheapest. Goldcrust, near Market Square, is quick and cheap. Lena's is where you go for proper bread. Hearth Bakery is lovely, and dear.
Nobody told them to think this. It is a picture each of them has built from prices, shop windows, the smell at the door and what their friends say.
That picture is a brand's position: where customers place it in their minds, compared with its rivals. Deciding which place a business wants to hold, and making everything it does say so, is positioning (market positioning).
It builds on two earlier steps. Segmentation and targeting (4.1.4) decide who Lena sells to. Her USP and the ways she differentiates her bread (4.2.1) give those customers a reason to choose her. Positioning is the result the customers see: the place Lena's holds in their minds, next to Goldcrust, the supermarket and Hearth.
It shows the real rivals
- Lena competes hardest with the bakeries customers see as similar to her
- Not every shop that sells bread is a close rival: the $1.20 loaf is bought for different reasons
It points to gaps
- A place nobody holds may be a group of customers nobody serves yet
- It may also be empty because nobody wants it: a gap has to be checked
It keeps the message straight
- The price, the bread, the adverts and the shop all have to say the same thing
- A $3 craft loaf sold in a scruffy shop tells customers two different stories
A position is what customers think: Lena can write 'the best bread in town' on every sign. If shoppers still think Hearth's bread is better, Hearth holds that place.
A position lives in the customer's head, not on the sign. The business can influence it, with its price, its product and its message, but it cannot simply announce it.
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Lena wants to see the town's bread market the way her customers see it. Marco asks 150 shoppers to score the bread of each bakery for quality, out of 10, and writes down the price of a large loaf at each one. Table 1 is what he gets.
| Bakery | Price of a large loaf | Quality score from 150 shoppers (out of 10) |
|---|---|---|
| The supermarket | $1.20 | 4 |
| Goldcrust (near Market Square) | $2.20 | 5 |
| Lena's | $3.00 | 8 |
| Hearth Bakery | $5.00 | 9 |
From the table Marco draws a position map (a perception map): a diagram that shows where customers place competing brands on two features at once. Here the two features are price and quality, the two things most shoppers weigh when they buy bread.
Four steps to a position map
Choose two features
Pick two things customers use to choose, one for each axis. Each must run from low to high. Marco uses price and quality because the table gives him both.
Draw and label the axes
A horizontal line for price and a vertical one for quality, crossing in the middle. Label both ends of each: low price on the left, high price on the right, low quality at the bottom, high quality at the top.
Place each brand from the data
One dot for each bakery, where its figures fall. The supermarket goes far left and low down. Hearth goes far right and near the top. Lena's sits in the middle for price and high up for quality.
Name every dot and add a title
Write each bakery's name beside its dot, and give the map a title that says which market it shows: 'Position map for bread in the town'.
On paper each bakery is a dot. Here the finished map is laid out as a grid: read the rows as the vertical axis, quality, and the columns as the horizontal axis, price.
| Position map for bread in the town | Low price (under $2.50) | Middle price ($2.50 to $3.99) | High price ($4 and over) |
|---|---|---|---|
| High quality (8 to 10) | (nobody) | Lena's: $3.00, 8 | Hearth Bakery: $5.00, 9 |
| Middle quality (5 to 7) | Goldcrust: $2.20, 5 | (nobody) | (nobody) |
| Low quality (1 to 4) | The supermarket: $1.20, 4 | (nobody) | (nobody) |
What a complete map has: A title. Two axes, each labelled at both ends. Every brand placed where its data puts it, and every brand named.
Place the brands against each other, not by guesswork: Goldcrust's loaf is dearer than the supermarket's and scores higher, so its dot goes to the right of the supermarket's and above it.
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The map is finished. Now Lena reads it, and three things stand out: who her real rival is, who is fighting whom, and where the empty spaces are.
| What you see on the map | What it means | In the town |
|---|---|---|
| Two dots close together | Customers see the two as similar, so they compete directly | The supermarket and Goldcrust, both cheap, both scored low |
| The nearest dot to yours | Your closest competitor, the one customers compare you with | Hearth Bakery: both high quality, but Lena's loaf is $2 cheaper for bread scored 1 point lower |
| A dot far from yours | A different group of customers, buying for different reasons | The supermarket's $1.20 loaf is not really Lena's rival |
| An empty area | A possible gap: nobody offers this mix of the two features | Middle price with middle quality, and high quality at a low price |
A gap is a question, not an answer: The top-left corner is empty: nobody sells high-quality bread at a low price. That is not a chance everyone has missed. Good flour and hours of proving cost money, so nobody can sell that bread for $1.20 and make a profit.
An empty space on the map (a market gap) is worth filling only if enough customers want what would go there, and a business can make it at a price that leaves a profit.
The map also tells Lena something about herself. She would like to be known as the best bread in town. Customers put Hearth a point above her. What they do give her is a place nobody else holds: high-quality bread at a middle price. That is a clear position, and one worth protecting.
Change the axes, change the story: Draw the map again with convenience (how easy a bakery is to get to, and how late it opens) against quality, and Goldcrust, open until nine with a bakery near Market Square, moves far ahead. Lena's three shops fall back.
Every map shows only the two features on its axes. Choose the two the customers in question care about most.
Goldcrust moves: This spring Goldcrust launches a Stone Baked range at $2.80, in a brown paper bag, with adverts about slow proving and real flour. It wants shoppers to move its dot up and to the right, towards Lena's.
Changing where customers place a brand is repositioning.
Repositioning is slow and costly. Shoppers have years of memories of Goldcrust as the quick, cheap choice, and one new bag will not change them in a month. It can also unsettle the customers a business already has: someone who went to Goldcrust for a $2.20 loaf may not want to pay $2.80.
Hold her place
- Keep the $3 price and remind shoppers what Goldcrust cannot copy: bakers who know every recipe
- Loyal customers keep the picture they already trust
- Costs little: no new range, no new adverts to fund
- Risk: if Stone Baked is good enough, the gap between the two dots closes
Move up, towards Hearth
- A premium loaf at $4.50, well away from Goldcrust's new range
- Could win shoppers who now treat themselves at Hearth
- Needs better ingredients and a shop that looks the part, which cost money
- Risk: regulars who chose Lena's for good bread at a fair price may drift away
Whichever way Lena chooses, the map has done its job: it has shown her where she stands, who is moving towards her, and what each choice would mean. What it cannot do is make the choice for her.
What a position map cannot tell you: It shows two features at a time. Freshness, convenience or a friendly face at the counter may matter as much, and they are not on it.
It shows what these 150 shoppers thought, this month. Other customers may see the bakeries differently, and opinions change, as Goldcrust is betting they will. It also says nothing about how big each bakery's sales are, or whether an empty space has any customers in it.
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How this comes up: With a table of data about four competing brands: using the table, construct a position map for all of them, for four marks.
With a finished map in the case, labelled Figure 1: comment on what the market research shows for the business, for two. That means one clear point about its position, backed by the map: a competitor's name, or where the brands sit against each other.
In longer case answers, the map is evidence: who the closest rival is, and whether a gap is real.
The four-mark map, in order
- A title that names the market: 'Position map for bread in the town'.
- Two axes from the table, one feature on each, crossing in the middle.
- Both ends of each axis labelled: low price and high price, low quality and high quality.
- Every brand placed from its data and named, each one in the right place against the others.
The trap: a map with no labels: Four neat dots on two lines score little if the axes do not say what they measure, or the dots do not say which bakery they are.
Check the order too. If one loaf is dearer than another in the table, its dot must sit further to the right on the map.
Using Table 1, construct a position map for the four bakeries in the town.
Model answer plan
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