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Positioning
is defined as a battle for the consumer’s mind. That
battle, given today’s brand clutter, seems to have developed
into a full-scale war. In this cluttered market, where
there are more than 150 brands of soap, 90 brands of
toothpaste and 200 brands of edible oil, how does one
position one’s brand in a manner that is meaningful
to the consumer, who is at the receiving end of all
that visual and verbal communication?
Marketers long ago learnt that positioning a brand merely
on product attributes would not help much except in
the early stages of the category itself or if the brand
was the first mover within the category. For, if your
soap lathered well, any number of the hundred-odd other
brands could lay claim to the same. So along came ‘image
positioning’ which led to soaps that bonded the family
together, those that kept you eternally young, soaps
that were the beauty secrets of film stars and those
that made you irresistible to the opposite sex.
If one continues in the same vein, then there are possibly
a million other ways in which one can position a brand
of soap. But, obviously, in order to make it work, the
positioning platform adopted has to be one that the
consumer can relate to. And here is where a technique
like benefit laddering can come to the rescue.
What is benefit laddering? The technique is based on
Gutman’s means-ends theory which focuses on the linkages
between the attributes that exist in products (the ‘means’),
the consequences for the consumer provided by the attribute
and the personal values (the ‘ends’) that the consequences
reinforce. To put it simply, it means that consumers
seek certain attributes in products and these attributes
lead to certain ‘consequences’ (benefits) for them.
And when the consequences matter to them, over time
they learn to choose products which possess those attributes
that lead to the relevant consequences.
Thus an atta that makes rotis that stay soft could lead
to the following: Understanding these linkages between
product attributes, their consequences and their ultimate
consumer ‘values’ are important if one has to arrive
at a positioning that the consumer can relate to. How
are these linkages arrived at through benefit laddering?
The interviewing technique consists of a series of probes
that aim at understanding why a particular attribute
is important to the consumer. Thus, if one were to talk
of hair oil, the question on attributes that consumers
seek in hair oils could result in a variety of answers
— fragrance, non-stickiness, presence of herbal ingredients,
colour, packaging, price and so on.
After having enumerated the attributes the next stage
involves taking each attribute one by one and understanding
why it is important to the consumer. Thus if one were
to consider ‘non-stickiness’ and the consumer was asked
why non-stickiness was important to her in a hair oil,
the response could be ‘so that my hair does not look
and feel oily’. Then again she would be asked why that
was important to her. The response could be ‘so that
I can keep the oil in my hair for 3 to 4 days’. Again,
why is that important? ‘So that my hair grows well.’
And why is that important? ‘So that I look good’ and
so on. The process continues till the responses begin
to get repetitive or till the consumer is not able to
think further.
The best example of a brand where the consumer has
been moved up the benefit ladder is perhaps Close Up.
Today, the brand has moved several rungs up the ladder
with self-confidence leading to situations unimaginable,
some aspirational, some not!.
Obviously the technique calls for a very different calibre
of interviewer who can ask probing questions without
sounding obtrusive or judgmental. The greater the skills
of the interviewer in eliciting responses, the richer
the output of the research. And although the technique
is used widely in qualitative focus group discussions,
the strength of the laddering technique is that it actually
superimposes this qualitative research technique of
skilled probing into larger sample sizes.
Thus, one can actually determine the number of times
one particular attribute led to a particular consequence
and the number of times that in turn led to another.
So at the end, one arrives at a network of such linkages
or an HVM (Hierarchical Value Map) that identifies the
more dominant linkages that exist. Fig. 2 (above) shows
the resultant linkages that were obtained in a study
that was carried out on edible oils. The most dominant
linkage that was found here was ‘refined Þ no cholesterol
Þ good health, no medical expenses Þ save money Þ look
after home well Þ happiness & contentment’.
As seen in this map, the ultimate values that many of
the consequences lead to are happiness and contentment,
pride in being a good mother, ability to relax, self-esteem,
self-reliance and so on.
The premise here is that it pays for a brand to be positioned
as offering a ‘consequence’ that the consumer associates
with the relevant attribute. The positioning need not
necessarily be on the end value. In fact, it may be
difficult for a fairly new category to actually make
the quantum leap from an ‘attribute’ to the ‘value’.
It would be necessary to actually hand-hold the consumer
up the benefit ladder.
The best example of a brand where the consumer has been
moved up the benefit ladder is perhaps Close Up. In
the beginning, the brand communication was more attribute-led
with visuals of the ‘mouthwash in the toothpaste’ connoting
freshness. Later on, it moved up to the ‘social confidence’
positioning. And today, the brand has moved several
rungs up the ladder with self-confidence leading to
situations unimaginable, some aspirational, some not! |
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