Most of us have an intuitive sense of superior branding. We prefer to purchase brands we find distinctive—that deliver on some important, relevant dimension better than other brands. These brands have typically achieved positional advantage. Yet few professionals have had the formal training that goes beyond marketing theory to bridge the “theory-doing gap”—understanding the specific techniques and strategies that can be used to create brands that attain positional advantage in the marketplace. Positioning for Advantage is a comprehensive how-to guide for creating, building, and executing effective brand strategies. Kimberly A. Whitler identifies essential marketing strategy techniques and moves through the major stages of positioning a brand to achieve in-market advantage. Introducing seven tools—from strategic positioning concepts to strategy mapping to influencer maps—Whitler provides templates, frameworks, and step-by-step processes to build and manage growth brands that achieve positional advantage. This book presents real-world scenarios, helping readers activate tools to increase skill in creating brands that achieve positional advantage. Brimming with insights for students and professionals alike, Positioning for Advantage helps aspiring C-level leaders understand not only what superior branding looks like but also how to make it come to life.

This second edition of Brand Positioning helps marketing and advertising professionals differentiate their product and give it a distinct advantage in an overcrowded global market. It explores the concepts and principles involved in developing sound positioning strategy and discusses practical applications,as well as how to: Secure competitive advantage Use celebrity endorsements to market products Establish brand positioning on the Internet And much more!

In this breakthrough book, marketing expert Austin McGhie urges readers to set aside their obsession with "branding" and instead focus on the real work of marketing: positioning. In fact, McGhie believes there's no marketing problem or opportunity that can't be framed as a positioning exercise. He argues that brands are a marketplace response, not a marketer's stimulus; if that response from the audience is simple, clear and on strategy, marketers can build a brand. Drawing on his 30-year career working with some of world's best-known brands, including Disney, ESPN, Nike, Google, Visa, Expedia, Best Buy, Microsoft, Anheuser-Busch, Abbott and YouTube, McGhie tackles the strategic essence of positioning and creating differentiated advantage. He deftly weaves the positioning discussion throughout the book with a series of real-life anecdotes to deliver a crisp, clear view of what it means to build a brand. McGhie has written a practical book that will guide and inspire marketers and in turn help them guide and inspire their audiences.

Conventional wisdom on strategy is no longer a reliable guide. In Essential Advantage, Booz & Company's Cesare Mainardi and Paul Leinwand maintain that success in any market accrues to firms with coherence: a tight match between their strategic direction and the capabilities that make them unique. Achieving this clarity takes a sharpness of focus that only exceptional companies have mastered. This book helps you identify your firm's blend of strategic direction and distinctive capabilities that give it the "right to win" in its chosen markets. Based on extensive research and filled with company examples--including Amazon.com, Johnson & Johnson, Tata Sons, and Procter & Gamble--Essential Advantage helps you construct a coherent company in which the pieces reinforce each other instead of working at cross-purposes. The authors reveal: · Why you should focus on a system of a few aligned capabilities · How to identify the "way to play" in your market · How to design a strategy for well-modulated growth · How to align a portfolio of businesses behind your capability system · How your strategy clarifies growth, costs, and people decisions Few companies achieve a capability-driven "right to win" in their market. This book helps you position your firm to be among them.

You know your product is awesome-but does anybody else? Successfully connecting your product with consumers isn't a matter of following trends, comparing yourself to the competition or trying to attract the widest customer base. So what is it? April Dunford, positioning guru and tech exec, is here to enlighten you.

Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning 6e deals with the process of developing and implementing a marketing strategy. The book focuses on competitive positioning at the heart of marketing strategy and includes in-depth discussion of the processes used in marketing to achieve competitive advantage. The book is primarily about creating and sustaining superior performance in the marketplace. It focuses on the two central issues in marketing strategy formulation – the identification of target markets and the creation of a differential advantage. In doing that, it recognises the emergence of new potential target markets born of the recession and increased concern for climate change; and it examines ways in which firms can differentiate their offerings through the recognition of environmental and social concerns. The book is ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students taking modules in Marketing Strategy, Marketing Management and Strategic Marketing Management.

This book contains a simple but powerful definition of services based upon a separation between back-stage and front-stage activities. Services deal with front interactions, production and manufacturing with back-stage operations. Teboul uses this distinction to systematically explore the important issues of the field.