How can marketing strategy be defined and what is the role of competitive positioning?

Posted: August 12th, 2013

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Definition of Marketing Strategy and Role of Competitive Positioning

Marketing strategy definition

Marketing strategy is the process through which companies or other organizations focus their limited resources to the best opportunities with an aim of increasing their sales, customer satisfaction and stakeholders’ goals, thereby achieving sustained competitive position of advantage. A marketing strategy aims at achieving the set marketing goals and objectives. A marketing strategy is a plan that directs the marketing activities. It involves all the marketing activities both long and short-term to analyze the market and come up with the best plan for achieving the goals and objectives of marketing (Shuili, Bhattacharya and Sen 224).

To understand this definition better, it is essential to understand what a strategy is. A strategy is an action that one takes with an aim of achieving certain goals, whether organizational or personal. It is a way one chooses to move from one position to another. In organizations, a strategy aims at achieving certain pre-determined goals. A strategy involves integration of the organization’s operations and the utilization of the limited resources within the company or organization with an aim of meeting the objectives set. More so, it aims at ensuring the limited resources deliver the best results or maximum benefit with the least input. The goals and objectives have to be defined before a strategy is designed and put in place. The main aim of the strategy is setting a blueprint for achieving the set goals. Thus, it also acts as a blueprint for decisions within the organization on what plan is to be used, or one that best suits the goals and objectives. Additionally, a long-term action followed to achieve goals that are varied. Additionally, it is used since it considers the needs of the customers and aligns the operations of the organization while also considering the competitors (Shuili, Bhattacharya and Sen 225).

Marketing is the other term in marketing strategy that one has to understand in order to have a better understanding of the whole process. Marketing is the act of moving goods and services from their concepts to the consumers through communicating and offering customers a value for their money. It involves identification, anticipation and satisfaction of customers in ways that yield profits for the organization. The aim of marketing is ensuring that customers are satisfied with the goods and services that an organization offers. It does this through communicating to customers to create awareness concerning its products (McNamara and Vaaler 339).

Therefore, a marketing strategy is a strategy that aims at achieving the marketing goals that include driving sales or moving the goods and services to the customers, achieving customer needs and satisfaction and stating competitive in the market. Additionally, it involves coordinating the four elements of marketing, the four Ps that include product, price, place and promotion (Berger 3). Therefore, it combines all the goals within the marketing department and comes up with one plan that will achieve them all. In order to come up with a marketing strategy, a marketing research from which the organization identifies the opportunities within the market is necessary in order to find out how best to align the information collected with the objectives. After a marketing research, a marketing strategy with an aim of exploring the available opportunities can be designed with ease. Therefore, a marketing strategy is an action plan with a main purpose of achieving all the marketing goals of an organization in order to achieve the maximum output from the least input.

Role of competitive positioning

Competitive positioning is the process by which organizations positions itself in the mind of the customer. Customers are interested in products they can trust and those that they hold a high value for. It involves creating a strong emotional picture to customers through which they associate the products. When an organization is competing, it aims at outdoing the other organizations in the market. Thus, it requires to position its products in the mind of the customer, so that thy will prefer buying this product to others provided by other organizations. Consumers look for products that they love and value (McNamara and Vaaler 339). Customers would walk or take an extra effort to get what they want even if a similar product provided by another organization is available. Therefore, competitive positioning is setting the company products in the back of the mind of a customer that makes them prefer the products to those of other competitors. According to Darling, it involves two steps which are, “establishing the initial market offering in the minds of consumers; and differentiating the marketing offering from competitors in the minds of consumers,” (210). Thus, the main purpose of positioning is establishing a position in the prospective customer’s mind.

With the current competition, that continues to increase steadily across the world companies and other organizations have adopted marketing strategies and innovations to improve their products. Companies have to go an extra mile to sell their product to the customers since all the competitors in the Market offer customers’ very good products. It remains for the customer to choose which of the product he or she wants. Thus, competitive positioning comes in to solve this problem. Customers are very insecure and are afraid of being cheated. Therefore, a trust will have to be gained. This can only be done by setting a good perception in the customer’s mind, which is what competitive positioning aim at achieving. Therefore, producing good products is no longer the success for organizations. Rather, the perceptions and attitude of people towards the product is the key to success (McNamara, Deephouse and Luce 174). Rebecca.

A competitive positioning is a short or sometimes along sentence stating a business plan. The positioning statement defines in a brief overview but with strong words the targeted market, category of competition, differentiating features, benefit as well as what the company does to achieve this goal. This helps in creating a brand for the company where the customers recognize the product form the positioning strategy used by the company (McNamara, Deephouse and Luce 174). This creates a distinction of the product from other products in the customer’s mind, which is how brands are created. When customers like the positioning statement, they are likely to buy product. On the other hand, if they do not like the positioning statement they rarely buy the product. Thus, driving sales is another role played well by competitive positioning (Shuili, Bhattacharya and Sen 234).

Competitive advantage creates a competitive advantage for the company through differentiating from the other competitors (Darling 219). Through a well-developed positioning strategy, the company is in a position to define itself to the customers. This becomes the main thing that communicates the plan of the company to the customers as well as what it intends to do for the customers. This requires that a company fully understands its capability to avoid promising what they might not be in a position to provide. Additionally, it helps define what the company needs to do in order to offer the stated position statement. In the current market, companies without competitive positioning have very slim opportunities for remaining successful due to the competition. Therefore, competitive positioning plays a crucial role in positioning a company at a competitive advantage against the other competitors since it creates a brand and differentiating the company from others in the mind of the customer.