Strategic Marketing: Planning and Control, Third Edition

■ Positioning alternatives

In a seminal work Ries and Trout (1981) claim that when considering pos-
itioning there are three principal alternatives open to an organisation:

1 An organisation can build on a current position to create a distinctive
perception of the brand by consumers. Avis famously uses the ‘We
Try Harder’ slogan to make a virtue out of being number two in the
market.
2 Having established the attributes that are most important to the con-
sumer, see if there are any unoccupied positions that are desirable in
consumer’s minds and therefore viable opportunities. IDV Ltd used
this approach when it launched Croft Original Sherry. The key product
attributes in the sherry market from a consumer’s perspective were the
colour and the taste of the product. Consumers favoured a sweet taste;
they also perceived that a light-coloured sherry was more sophisticated
than the traditional, darker-coloured sherries (see Figure 9.8). There
was at the time no sherry that had a light colour and a sweet taste and
yet this combination was highly desirable to consumers. Croft Original
entered the market with this unique positioning and now is the best
selling sherry brand in the UK market.

Targeting, positioning and brand strategy 193

Limited facilities

Sweet taste

Dark Light

Dry

sherries

Traditional

sweet

sherries

Opportunity

for a light

coloured sweet

sherry

o

ladodd

r

Figure 9.8

Perceptual map of

the sherry market