Can you "position" yourself too strongly in the market?
| Answer: One of the criteria often used for judging a good positioning statement is that it is maneuverable. This ensures that the positioning doesn’t lock you in, especially in markets that change. Clearly this is difficult since you want to have a strong position and that requires standing for something unique and defensible and communicating that to the market. So the answer is that in fact you can position yourself too strongly in cases where the market changes quickly. One way to avoid this, however, is to take into consideration a number of different future scenarios and see whether or not the positioning you have chosen is "robust" to these different scenarios (see our tutorial on making your marketing plan robust. If so, then your chosen positioning should work even if the market shifts and thus it's best to take a strong position. |
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