Assess your Global brand’s positioning strategy.
Clarke Ricks School of Business,
Liberty University
BUSI 690: Policy and Strategy in Global Competition
Dr. Hicks
April 30, 2022
Assess your Global brand’s positioning strategy.
Brand managers typically believe that their marketing differentiation strategy distinguishes
their brand in consumers’ minds and accounts for its sales. Measuring customers’ perceptions
of a brand’s distinctiveness and linking that statistically to performance provides an instant
check on a strategy’s effectiveness. For example, if the marketing goal is to maximize price, but
the brand is becoming more mainstream in consumers’ minds, the C-D map will reveal the
disconnect between strategy and objective. Companies can then use the tool to assess whether
strategy adjustments are having the desired effect on business performance.
Track the competition.
Conventional maps usually gauge consumer perceptions about narrow product
characteristics. For example, a map may evaluate brands of beer on bitterness and foaminess.
However, neighbors on such maps aren’t necessarily competitors. Heineken and Old Milwaukee
may be equally bitter and foamy, but they don’t directly compete.
C-D maps overcome this sort of challenge because they reveal a brand’s location relative to
others in a way that reflects consumers’ mental representations of the category. This helps
focus competitive efforts on actual rather than perceived competition. For instance, it may
come as a surprise to managers of the Lincoln brand that their brand is closer to Chrysler than
to Cadillac in consumers’ minds. Similarly, while Dodge and Chevrolet might consider
themselves competitors, C-D maps suggest that consumers perceive substantial differences
between the two.
Manage your brand portfolio.
Because C-D maps can be made for any brand in any category, they allow companies to
compare brand performance and strategy across categories. Thus a company that sells multiple
brands of different product types could use the maps to allocate resources objectively across
categories. Suppose the consumer goods conglomerate Unilever wanted to increase sales of
two brands that are noncentral in the U.S. market: Tigi in hair care and Degree in deodorants.
Using C-D maps, it could estimate the amount of marketing resources to allocate to each brand
(after controlling for category size and advertising expenditures) to achieve a given objective—
for example, a specific increase in centrality that would yield a specific increase in sales volume.
The C-D map not only would help Unilever standardize and provide a rationale for budget
allocation across brands but also would allow the company to track how effectively marketing
dollars were utilized by the brand teams, by measuring how far the brands moved on the maps.
Manage global brands.
Many companies that attempt to manage global brands in a standardized way find
themselves stymied by differences across markets. C-D maps offer a way to visualize differences
in consumer perceptions and in performance across markets. Consider Chevrolet and Tide. Both
brands are highly central in the United States but score relatively low in centrality and
distinctiveness in emerging markets such as India. The ability to gauge these differences is
useful on three levels. First, it helps a firm set realistic performance goals for a global brand
across geographical markets. Second, it helps explain differences in cross-border performance.
And finally, it helps global managers make decisions about brand standardization versus
localization.
Track and analyze results.
Managers often struggle to quantify the impact of their marketing efforts on consumers’
perceptions. The two dimensions that C-D maps track—centrality and distinctiveness—are
shared by all brands and remain relevant over time. By repeatedly charting the position
changes that result from marketing initiatives, marketers should be able to gauge how their
(and their competitors’) actions affect consumer perceptions.
For example, companies should tie pricing disruptions (such as E-Trade’s slashing of
brokerage fees) or focused advertising campaigns (Apple’s “I’m a Mac…I’m a PC” campaign) to
movements of brands on the C-D map to yield insights about what drives consumer perceptions
—and brand performance. The more frequent the mapping, particularly in categories that have
a lot of innovation and market churn, the clearer the resulting picture.
Which quadrant a brand occupies on the C-D map reflects the firm’s strategy, capabilities,
and the nature of the market, but that position isn’t set in stone. Companies may, for good
reason, shift a brand’s location—to exploit less crowded territory, for example, or grow sales.
Unconventional brands may seek to become more central in consumers’ minds to gain market
share, as Tesla is doing. Peripheral brands may also see opportunities in becoming more
mainstream, as Kia has.
By allowing a firm to evaluate a brand’s strategic position, assess the risks and rewards of
shifting it, and monitor progress along the way, C-D maps can help ensure that the investment
pays off.
