local marketing and individual marketing.

local marketing and individual marketing.

Local marketing involves tailoring brands and promotions to the needs and wants of local customer groups—cities, neighborhoods, and even specific stores. Local marketing has drawbacks.
• It can drive up manufacturing and marketing costs by reducing economies of scale.
• It can create logistics problems.

Individual marketing is the tailoring of products and marketing programs to the needs and preferences of individual customers. Individual marketing has also been labeled one-to-one marketing, mass customization, and markets-of-one marketing.

Choosing a Targeting Strategy

Which strategy is best depends on:
• Company resources
• Product variability
• Product’s life-cycle stage
• Market variability
• Competitors’ marketing strategies

Socially Responsible Target Marketing: Target marketing sometimes generates controversy and concern. Issues usually involve the targeting of vulnerable or disadvantaged consumers with controversial or potentially harmful products. Marketers of a wide range of industries have been criticized for their marketing efforts directed toward children. Problems arise when marketing adult products to kids, whether intentionally or unintentionally. The growth of the Internet and other carefully targeted direct media has raised new concerns about potential targeting abuses. The issue is not so much who is targeted, but how and for what. Controversies arise when marketers attempt to profit by unfairly targeting vulnerable segments or target them with questionable products or tactics. Socially responsible marketing calls for segmentation and targeting that serve not just the interests of the company, but also the interests of those targeted.

DIFFERENTIATION AND POSITIONING

Value proposition: How a company will create differentiated value for targeted segments and what positions it wants to occupy in those segments. A product position is the way the product is defined by consumers on important attributes.

Positioning Maps: Perceptual positioning maps show consumer perceptions of their brands versus competing products on important buying dimensions.

Choosing a Differentiation and Positioning Strategy: The differentiation and positioning task consists of three steps:

1. Identifying a set of differentiating competitive advantages upon which to build a position
2. Choosing the right competitive advantages
3. Selecting an overall positioning strategy

Identifying Possible Value Differences and Competitive Advantages

To the extent that a company can differentiate and position itself as providing superior customer value, it gains competitive advantage. It can differentiate along the lines of product, service, channel, people, or image. Choosing the Right Competitive Advantages

How Many Differences to Promote: Ad man Rosser Reeves believes a company should develop a unique selling proposition (USP) for each brand and stick to it. Other marketers think that companies should position themselves on more than one differentiator.

Which Differences to Promote: A difference is worth establishing to the extent that it satisfies the following criteria:
Important: The difference delivers a highly valued benefit to target buyers.
Distinctive: Competitors do not offer the difference, or the company can offer it in a more distinctive way.
Superior: The difference is superior to other ways that customers might obtain the same benefit.
Communicable: The difference is communicable and visible to buyers.
Preemptive: Competitors cannot easily copy the difference.
Affordable: Buyers can afford to pay for the difference.
Profitable: The company can introduce the difference profitably.
Selecting an Overall Positioning Strategy

The full positioning of a brand is called the brand’s value proposition.
More for More positioning involves providing the most upscale product or service and charging a higher price to cover the higher costs.
More for the Same positioning involves introducing a brand offering comparable quality but at a lower price.
The Same for Less positioning can be a powerful value proposition—everyone likes a good deal.
Less for Much Less positioning is offering products that offer less and therefore cost less. This involves meeting consumers’ lower performance or quality requirements at a much lower price.
More for Less positioning is the winning value proposition.

In the long run, companies will find it very difficult to sustain such best-of-both positioning.
Developing a Positioning Statement: Company and brand positioning should be summed up in a positioning statement. The statement should follow the form: To (target segment and need) our (brand) is (concept) that (point of difference).