You will read a short passage, listen to a talk, and answer a question about

Now listen to part of a lecture on this topic in a marketing class.
    Product positioning refers to consumers’ perceptions of a product’s attributes, uses, quality, and advantages and disadvantages relative to competing brands. Marketers often conduct marketing research studies to analyze consumer preferences and to construct product position maps that plot their products’ positions in relation to those of competitors’ offerings. So positioning helps establish product or service identity within the eyes of the purchaser. A company’s positioning strategy is affected by a number of variables related to customers’ motivations and requirements, as well as by its competitors’ actions.
    Let’s take a look at an example so that you can better understand product positioning and how it relates to customer perception and motivations. Take me for example, I used to work in the advertising unit for a car company. Our target customers were people living in the suburbs who commuted to the city center daily for work. The advertising strategy we used focused on the car’s luxuriousness and features. Our sales were pretty dismal at first, but after conducting some market research, we realized that we needed to reposition our product to better appeal to the target customers. We realized that for daily commuters, the most important aspect of a car was in fact fuel economy and gas money saving. By highlighting the car’s fuel economy and possible annual savings on gas, we were able to position the car as more efficient and cost-effective than car models of competing brands. Without changing a thing about our product, sales tripled after the positioning shift. We successfully changed the customer’s perceptions by altering our product’s positioning.