21. What are the components of Product Positioning? Explain any two components.

Product positioning is a form of marketing that presents the benefits of your product to a
particular target audience. Through market research and focus groups, marketers can determine
which audience to target based on favorable responses to the product.
Product positioning has come a long way since Al Ries and Jack Trout popularized the concept
in the 1960s. Regardless, some businesses still use positioning templates to craft their product’s
positioning, and that, in my opinion, is limiting. Because I like to think of successful product
positioning as the right combination of several components. Let’s look at each of them
separately.
Pricing
Price’s effect on product positioning swings in several ways. Luxury products typically cost
more, and many products with extensive features or applications also cost more. In contrast,
some products offer the same or more features than the competition but at lower prices.

For example, most of the top SEO tools start from $99 a month and offer two months for free if
you’re paying for an annual plan. That’s about $990 per year for their basic plan. Enter Link
Assistant’s SEO PowerSuite. “Competitive pricing.” That tells you all you need to know about
the cost of the product. 
The $699 one-year license for its most advanced plan is a far cry from other tools like Ahrefs,
which costs $9,990 a year at the same level.
Product Features
Positioning products by use case is practical in some situations. For example, a company can
have two video-calling applications—one for formal calls and one for informal calls. In this case,
the positioning will be different. Consider this example.
Google Meet is for professional video conferences and video meetings for up to 250 participants.
You can use a free plan depending on your needs, but a paid plan starts from only $10 a month.
It says “premium video meetings.” That’s already an announcement that it is not a free product
(it’s currently free through September 30 because of the pandemic). The product screenshot
portrays a more professional setting than the one used for Google Duo.

22. Write short notes on Product Positioning Map and IMC Mix.

Firms use perceptual or positioning maps to help them develop a market positioning strategy for
their product or service. As the maps are based on the perception of the buyer they are sometimes
called perceptual maps. Positioning maps show where existing products and services are
positioned in the market so that the firm can decide where they would like to place (position)
their product. Firms have two options they can either position their product so that it fills a gap in
the market or if they would like to compete against their competitors they can position it where
existing products have placed their product.
Example Perceptual Map
In the example below two dimensions price and quality have been used. If we plot the UK chocolate
market, we can identify where existing chocolate brands have been positioned by manufacturers. For
example our fictional brand of Belgian chocolates called Belgium Chocolates are high quality and high
price so they are placed in the top right hand box, whilst Twix is an affordable "every day" treat chocolate
so it has been placed in the bottom left hand square, in the low quality low price brand box.
The Purpose of Perceptual Maps
Perceptual maps can help identify where (in the market) an organisation could position a new brand. In
our example this could be at the medium price and medium quality position, as there is a gap there. There
is also a gap in high price low quality but consumers will not want to pay a lot of money for a low quality
product. Similarly the low price high quality box is empty because manufacturers would find it difficult to
make a high quality chocolate for a cheap price or make a profit from selling a high quality product at a
low price.
Integrated marketing communication
Integrated marketing communication is the the process of coordinating all this activity across
different communication methods. Note that a central theme of this definition is persuasion:
persuading people to believe something, to desire something, and/or to do something. Effective
marketing communication is goal directed, and it is aligned with an organization’s marketing
strategy. It aims to deliver a particular message to a specific audience with a targeted purpose of
altering perceptions and/or behavior. Integrated marketing communication (IMC) makes this
marketing activity more efficient and effective because it relies on multiple communication
methods and customer touch points to deliver a consistent message in more ways and in more
compelling ways.