ely 45 minutes driving time. Retail shopping in the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Area is accessible to the residents of the Houma Metropolitan Area via a four-lane divided highway that requires approximately 55 minutes driving time. The larger populations of the New Orleans Metropolitan Area (1.3 million) and Baton Rouge Metropolitan Area (530,000) results in a greater variety of retail shopping venues in those areas than exist in the Houma Metropolitan Area (183,000). Houma Metropolitan Area retailers generally and the J. C. Penney particularly, therefore, must both provide advantages to consumers and communicate those advantages to consumers to persuade residents of the Houma Metropolitan Area to shop locally, as opposed to shopping in New Orleans or Baton Rouge.
Market Positioning and Marketing Communication
Communicating effectively with consumers in the contemporary period is more difficult than has been the case in the recent past. Al Ries and Jack Trout (1993), in Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind, attribute this situation to the development of an era of information overload, wherein so much information is presented to the consumer in contemporary society that most people attempt to "tune out" most of it. This behavior is particularly true with respect to advertising.
Consumers who would rather not deal with advertising messages pose a real problem for marketers, who must find a way to get their messages into the minds of consumers. Before a marketer can present her or his advertising messages in such a way that they will not be filtered out by consumers, however, the marketer first must determine some very specific points about both the company and the product.
The marketer must deal honestly with the position of the company and the product. Is the company a market leader, a market follower, or a marketing unknown?. The J. C. Penney Company certainly is not a marketing unknown; however, neither can the compa...