Sources:

http://www.quickmba.com/marketing/ries-trout/positioning/

Al Ries and Jack Trout, writers of the book Positioning: A Battle of the Minds (1981), show that their ideas from an older generation exist even now. Their basic belief is that in the market the way your brand is positioned and advertised is ultimately the determining factor in terms of whether or not your brand/good will be successful. Over a series of sections, Ries and Trout argue that not only is it important to have a good product, it is important to be first in the minds of the consumers. They genuinely believe that it is all based on human perception the success of a brand, which isn’t entirely wrong. The way we, the buyers, see the product is ultimately the decider of whether or not the product will be popular and create large profit for the respective companies. However, the amount of emphasis on being put first and almost toying with the perception and the minds of the consumers is not only a little worrying, but it is rather futile.

For starters, the product matters or at least it should. It matters whether or not the product is actually a quality product. And positioning of the product should not be prioritized over the quality. I also think there is a line between comparing your product to your competitor and conditioning the consumer’s mind into thinking that your product is different than its competitors when it’s not. It is important to claim something that is true and to be first. But sacrificing the quality of the product just to be first is questionable. I think that a if a product is truly a quality product it will, sooner or later, gain success simply because people will come to realize that this is worth investing in. It is possible to rush into something and realize that it is no good, and sometimes it can be too late to fix the product if enough people come to the realization that this is truly not a worthy product investing in.

There are also other liabilities with this idea, establishing leadership is important, yes, but so is establishing a good product which I feel that Ries and Trout really choose to ignore in this excerpt. By putting too much emphasis on marketing and toying with the mind of the consumer we forget that a good product can stand on its own without the need of well-crafted advertising. Take Blackberry for example, despite its signature keyboard, it’s well crafted marketing made Blackberry as good as it is, rising sales which eventually fell over time when people realized that it was not a good as phone as it seemed. This is why I think as much as Ries and Trout have excellent ideas, I don’t think they should be looked at as building blocks for success in a business.