L15: Positioning Services — Position Maps

Good morning, class. Welcome back to MGA-301. Last class we covered the marketing communications mix for services and the four unique communication challenges services face. Today, Lecture 15, we move to Positioning Services and Position Maps. [0–10 minutes: Introduction] Imagine you are a student in Goa who wants to eat out tonight. You open Zomato and see: a fine-dining Portuguese restaurant in Fontainhas at two thousand rupees per head; a fast-casual North Indian dhaba near Panaji bus stand at two hundred rupees; a trendy cafe in Campal serving continental breakfast and smoothie bowls at five hundred rupees; and a home-delivered traditional Goan fish curry thali at one fifty. Each of these restaurants occupies a different position in your mind. When you think of a special occasion, you think of the Portuguese restaurant. When you want quick, filling food on a budget, you think of the dhaba. These mental positions — the slots that different service brands occupy in the consumer's mind — are not accidental. They are the result of deliberate positioning strategies. Positioning is the act of designing the company's offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market. Today we learn the analytical tools — specifically perceptual maps — that help service firms understand the competitive landscape and choose where to compete. [10–40 minutes: Core Content] Positioning theory was popularised by Al Ries and Jack Trout, who argued in "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind" that positioning is fundamentally about managing perceptions in the customer's mind, not about the physical product or service itself. For services, this is especially relevant because the service is largely invisible before purchase. A strong positioning strategy answers three questions: Who is our target customer? What is our competitive frame of reference — who are we competing against? And what is our point of differentiation — why should our target customer prefer us? To make positioning decisions, managers need to visualise the competitive landscape. This is where position maps — also called perceptual maps — come in. A perceptual map is a two-dimensional diagram that plots competing services on two axes, where each axis represents an attribute that is important to customers. By seeing where competitors cluster and where there are empty spaces, managers can identify positioning opportunities. How do you construct a perceptual map? Three steps. First, identify the most important attributes that customers use to evaluate services in your category — through customer research, surveys, interviews. Second, collect customer perception data — ask customers to rate each competing firm on each attribute. Third, plot the firms on the map and interpret the pattern. Let me walk through an example. Mapping the hotel market in Goa. Research shows customers care most about: one, price level — from budget to luxury; two, service personalisation — from standardised to highly personalised. Plotting: Taj Exotica sits in the high-price, high-personalisation quadrant. OYO sits in the low-price, standardised quadrant. Lemon Tree is in the middle. A heritage homestay in Fontainhas — family-run, moderate price — sits in the moderate-price, high-personalisation quadrant. The map reveals that the low-price, highly-personalised quadrant is relatively empty — a potential positioning opportunity. This is the fundamental insight perceptual mapping provides: it reveals gaps in the competitive space where customer needs may be unmet. Lovelock and Wirtz emphasise that positioning requires a service firm to make a credible, sustainable, and relevant claim to a space. Credible means your service must actually deliver on the position. Sustainable means competitors cannot easily copy it. Relevant means customers must actually care about the dimension on which you differentiate. Types of positioning strategy: Attribute positioning — claiming to be best on a specific attribute. Benefit positioning — positioning on the benefit you deliver, not the feature. Practo says "your health, our priority" — a benefit position. Usage positioning — for a specific use occasion. Zomato's "late night munchies" content targets the 11 PM hunger occasion. User positioning — based on who uses the service. Business class lounges position for senior executives. Competitive positioning — directly against a competitor. Ola positioned against Uber by emphasising its understanding of local Indian routes. Repositioning is notoriously difficult because you must change perceptions already embedded in the customer's mind. Air India's transformation under the Tata Group is an ongoing repositioning exercise — from a legacy state carrier associated with delays and poor service to a premium, modern airline. This requires simultaneous changes to service quality, communications, pricing, and service environment. It takes years. The position map must be based on customer perceptions, not management assumptions. A private hospital in Goa might believe it is positioned as a high-quality, compassionate care provider, but customers might perceive it as expensive and impersonal. The position map built from customer research reveals this gap and forces honest self-assessment. [40–55 minutes: Activity and Discussion] Group activity. Three groups. Each group constructs a simple perceptual map for a service category in Goa. Group 1 — food delivery: Zomato, Swiggy, local restaurant own delivery, home cooks on WhatsApp. Group 2 — transportation: Ola, Uber, Goa pilot taxis, Kadamba buses, bike rentals. Group 3 — accommodation: Taj, OYO, Airbnb homestays, government tourist hostels, beach shacks with rooms. For each: agree on the two most important customer attributes. Draw the map. Plot each competitor. Identify: is there a gap where an opportunity might exist? Twelve minutes. Then debrief. [Debrief. Emphasise that attribute choice determines everything about what the map reveals.] Discussion question: Based on today's exercise, do you think any of the service firms we plotted are occupying a position that is inconsistent with what they actually deliver? In other words, is any firm making a positioning claim they cannot back up with actual service quality? What are the consequences of that mismatch? [55–60 minutes: Summary and Assignment] To summarise: positioning is about owning a distinctive space in the customer's mind. Perceptual maps are two-dimensional visual tools that reveal the competitive landscape and identify gaps. Good positioning must be credible, sustainable, and relevant. Types of positioning strategies — attribute, benefit, usage, user, and competitive. Assignment: Draw a perceptual map for the banking sector in Goa using SBI, HDFC, Bank of Baroda, a fintech player, and one local Goan co-operative bank. Choose two relevant positioning dimensions and justify why you chose them. One page. Next lecture — Lecture 16 — we go deeper into Competitive Market Positioning — how to sustain a position over time and defend it against competitors. See you then. Thank you.