Positioning in Marketing

Introduction: A Banana Is Not Just a Banana

Anyone who has ever been a consumer is aware of the basic concept of positioning within the field of marketing. Product positioning refers not to a physical place occupied by the product but rather a psychological one: Positioning can be defined as the psychological place that a company's product occupies in the minds of consumers and potential consumers. Positioning entails all the processes that a company must undertake to ensure that when a consumer thinks of athletic shoes - or bananas or laptops - your company's name is the one that comes to mind. The ability to position one's brand in the mind of potential consumers is always a challenge for a company and is especially challenging when the product is a trendy one. This paper examines the ways in which one company - the Dole Corporation - has tried to position its one of its products (bananas) so that it can increase its competitive share in the marketplace.

When it comes to bananas, Dole has long been at a disadvantage. The U.S.-based Dole is association at least for most Americans with pineapples and with various shady dealings in Hawai'i. If you want to go bananas, you go to Chiquita. Chiquita is Dole's major competitor at least in terms of banana sales (it is not a significant competitor in terms of pineapples, for example) and the two companies have clearly tried in recent years to differentiate themselves from each other so as to grab a larger share of the market. This

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uit.com.au/pages/marketing.htm). Often (and arguably this may nearly always be true) the criterion or criteria that cause people to choose one product over another is a subjective one or a group of subjective ones. Buyers' preferences may have little to do with tangible differences in the products but are related to advertising, brand names, and distinctive designs (www.tradeport.irg). This means that the company is in control of only some of the aspects of positioning while many elements of the positioning process are in fact actually in the hands of the consumers. People may, for example, buy Chiquita bananas because they really loved Chiquita Bananas, the advertising icon of the company of a woman with her cool fruit-bowl hat that sang to them on television commercials when they were kids. (This advertising campaign was controlled by the company at the time, but it cannot control people's memories of it.) Or they may refuse to buy Dole bananas because of the company's shameful role in overthrowing the Hawai'ian royal family. (Again, its actions in Hawai'i were controlled by the company, but may well not reflect the vision of the company's current leaders. Product Differentiation as Key to Positioning The degree of produ

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