Competitive Positioning: The Key to Marketing Strategy

This book is aimed at final year marketing students, MBA students and marketing managers. Focusing on how to create and sustain superior performance in the market place this book deals with the two central issues in marketing strategy formulation: the identification of target markets and the customers that the company will seek to serve; and the creation of a differential advantage, or competitive edge, that will enable a company to serve the customers more effectively than the competition. Taken together, decisions on these two issues create the competitive positioning of a company from which the implementation of the marketing programme and the elements of the marketing mix are dictated. The book discusses the issues of segmentation and positioning, and how best to apply these approaches. Strategies are presented for defending one's own and attacking one's competitors' positions. Important issues for the 1990s are identified and a framework for developing marketing strategy is presented. British and European examples are given, for example Unilever, Amstrad and American theme parks.