Product positioning

Product positioning is the process of matching product features to the needs of each market segment by identifying benefits.

Lidstone (1987) describes how to do "product positioning analysis" as follows:

1. Discover the major needs of the doctor/patient in the relevant segment.
2. Establish the order of priority of these needs.
3. Ask doctors to rank your product and the major competitors according to their belief as to how well they satisfy these needs.
4. Collect the answers from the doctors seen and combine on a chart.
5. Where the doctors believe that your product is relatively weak, but you can prove [or convince them] that it is relatively strong, you have an area which you can exploit through promotion to improve positioning.

Lidstone J with Collier T. Marketing planning for the pharmaceutical industry. Aldershot UK. Gower 1987