Market positioning is about identity: who your brand or company is in the marketplace vis-à-vis the competition and in the eyes of the customer. Once you see who you are, you can determine who you want to be.

Traditionally, the people responsible for positioning brands have concentrated on points of difference – the benefits that set each brand apart from the competition. Such points of differentiation are, in many cases, what consumers remember about a brand. But points of differentiation alone are not enough to sustain a brand against competitors. Effective brand positioning requires not only careful consideration of a brand’s points of difference, but also of what we call its points of parity with other products.

Points of parity are the associations that are not necessarily unique to the brand but may be shared with other brands. Consumer might not consider a bank truly a “bank” unless it offers checking and saving plans, safe-deposit boxes, home loans etc. the approach you sue to meet these minimum requirements for planning the game will depend on where your product is in its life cycle.

In contrast, strong, favorable, unique associations that distinguish a brand from others in the same frame of reference are fundamental to successful brand positioning. There are two questions to ask about your brand’s point of difference: are they desirable to customers and can you deliver them? First of all, desirability – to qualify as desirable, a point of difference must be perceived by the brand’s audience as both relevant and believable. Secondly, deliverability – creating the point of difference must be feasible, profitable, defensible and difficult to attack.

Developing an effective position also requires that these elements be internally consistent at any point in time and over time. First of all, ensuring that attributes don’t contradict one another is particularly important. For example, it might be difficult to position a brand as “inexpensive” and at the same time assert that it is “of the highest quality”. Second, sequencing is sued to establish a brand’s “great taste” before you move on to “less filling”, meanwhile, leverage some other, unconnected attribute. Miller Lite addressed the negative correlation between great taste and low calories by presenting well-known and well-liked celebrities to lend credibility to the taste benefit.