Construct · 4 fields · 4 citations
One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.
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The deliberate design of a brand's offer and communication so that it occupies a distinctive, valued place in the mind of a target customer, defined relative to competing brands rather than in absolute terms. Ries and Trout argued in Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind that customers hold a mental ladder of brands in each category, and that a brand wins by claiming an unoccupied rung and repeating a simple, differentiating message. The referent is a perception to be shaped through segmentation, a positioning statement, and a perceptual map, not a coordinate to be estimated, a subject slot in talk, or a firm's configuration of activities.[1]
The determination of a receiver's location, and often its clock offset, by estimating it from the measured ranges to several satellites of known position, as in GPS and other global navigation satellite systems. Zumberge and colleagues set out precise point positioning, in which precomputed satellite orbits and clocks let a single receiver's coordinates be solved to centimetre level, with accuracy limited by measurement geometry through the dilution of precision. The referent is a quantitative estimation problem solved by trilateration and least squares, expressed in metres of coordinates, not a place in a customer's mind, a slot in a conversation, or a firm's strategy.[2]
In positioning theory, the process by which people are located, and locate themselves and each other, as particular kinds of subject within the unfolding story lines of a conversation, taking up and assigning rights, duties, and ways of speaking. Davies and Harré argued that to be positioned in a discursive act is to be made available a certain repertoire of things one may say and do, so that the self is produced and reproduced in talk rather than fixed in advance. The referent is a fluid social location within discourse, traced by close reading of interaction, not a coordinate, a brand image, or a competitive stance.[3]
A firm's strategic position: the distinctive configuration of activities by which it seeks sustainable competitive advantage, performing different activities from rivals or performing similar activities in different ways. Porter argued in What is strategy? that strategy rests on choosing a position competitors cannot easily straddle, defended by trade-offs and by the fit among a company's activities, and that this is separate from operational effectiveness, which every firm pursues on the same frontier. The referent is a firm's place in the space of activity choices within an industry, not a place in a buyer's mind, a location in talk, or a solved coordinate.[4]
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