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consultant lecturer researcher writer |
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| Positioning and Market Development |
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| 20. maj 1991 | |
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Introdoction Until recently there have been only some big international companies with their major brands present on Yugoslav market. Great changes in Eastern Europe in 1990 brought great expectations not just for ordinary people in these countries but also for the business in the West. Many American and European companies invest heavily into former socialist countries and their managers put much effort to get shares of the new markets. Modes of entry, business practices and marketing services are main themes on seminars with titles such as "...challenges of Eastern Europe". Brand managers and other business people in international companies who market their products into Eastern Europe usually have very good knowledge of marketing and are aware of great importance of research. On the other hand, they are very careful about using available marketing services and often they want strict control over research and other marketing projects, executed by domestic marketing firms. Marketing research services in Yugoslavia definitely were far from the standards of the developed countries. There was no problem to get general answers on simple questions from omnibus surveys but state of the art research was not in everyday use. Though some researchers followed the latest marketing developments, their use was often limited to projects in which clients were ready to support academic efforts. However, quality of marketing research is improving with the course of general market development. The case of positioning Since the first article of Trout and Ries in 1972, positioning has received great attention by marketing scholars and practitioners. There are few marketing concepts with such rich and elaborate methodology. Especially through advertising practice we can see how useful and important were results of numerous positioning studies among consumers in the developed countries. In Yugoslavia, positioning studies were very often just a curiosity and not the strategic tool for marketing decisions. For that reason, we hadn't put that much attention to certain results that showed lack of differentiation among brands. In our studies, there were only a few brands with distinct positions, usually in the more competitive markets. Under new market conditions, there is great demand for marketing research and especially for segmentation and positioning studies. Big world producers of alcoholic beverages and soft drinks, for example, want to know as much as possible about market structure and consumer characteristics. In some case they demand exact positions of all main brands in all Yugoslav geographical segments through use of the same bases as in the country of origin. And here we run into problems of crossing cultures, managing international brands, introducing sophisticated products into less developed societies, etc. Research objectives Positioning studies for foreign clients are definitely not academic games, anymore. In fact, we are confronted with serious questions, such as: Can we position foreign brands that consumers hardly know ? What positioning bases can we use for a product that means new concept for majority of local consumers ? What is the point in positioning where only one or two brands exist in certain product class ? One further question is, if we really want the same position for certain brand that one occupies in the country of origin. Most likely, that is not even possible, but then we want to know how to position it during the launching phase, in order to gain desired position over a few years. The above questions we could partly answer with the help of plentiful literature on positioning. However, there is not much written on early stage of positioning under conditions of less structured and developed market. Branding and positioning across cultures is becoming a topic but only a few studies have been published. According to our discussion, the objective of our study is then, "analysis of positioning process in its early phase under specific conditions of rapid market development". Research methodology In our dissertation we want to compare positioning results for several brands of products in different life cycles, under conditions of the less and the most developed markets. However, this study is in the preparation phase, yet. For this preliminary paper, we will analyse results of the latest positioning studies of beverages and food items on Yugoslav market. With the help of discriminant analysis and other multivariate methods we will be able to test the appropriateness of different positioning bases for different product classes under present conditions of Yugoslav market development. On the basis of our data, we can also address issue of transferring brands into the culturally and economically different markets. Paper presented at 4th colloqium for doctoral students, Dublin, May 20th, 1991. |
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