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Stavros P. Kalafatis: Professor of Business Marketing, Kingston Business School, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, UK
Markos H. Tsogas: Senior Lecturer, Kingston Business School, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, UK
Charles Blankson: Assistant Professor, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan, USA
ACKNOWLEDGMENT: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the IUFRO & FPS Conference held in British Columbia, Canada, in June 1997.
Introduction
Concept of positioning. There is general agreement that the concept of positioning has become one of the fundamental components of modern marketing management (Kotler, 2000; Hooley et al., 1998). Its importance is further supported by evidence that indicates a positive relationship between company performance (in terms of profitability and/or efficiency) and well-formulated and clearly-defined positioning activities (Brooksbank, 1994; Devlin et al., 1995; Porter, 1996).
lthough a number of authors in business marketing fail to deal/debate issues of positioning (Wilson, 1991; Powers, 1991; Haas, 1995) there is also clear acknowledgement of the relevance and importance of the concept within the domain of business marketing. Dovel (1990) contended that:"Positioning shouldn't be just a part of your strategy. It should be the backbone of your business plan."
This is echoed by Webster (1991) who stated that:"Positioning is an important strategic concept, developed in consumer marketing but with equal applicability for industrial products and services."
He goes on to refer to it as "... the firm's value positioning ..." which he defines as "... the firm's unique way of delivering value to customers."
Despite the above, we have been unable to identify empirically developed and reliable positioning typologies and models that would allow the development of normative guidelines. Such observations formed the basis of the research reported here. More specifically, the purpose of the present research is to test a new positioning typology in the domain of business marketing and determine whether the proposed typology contains predictive and/or explanatory powers in terms of positioning strategies as perceived by those operating within a well-established, commodity market sector.
Cross-sectional study. In this paper we first debate general issues of positioning before we proceed to review literature that deals specifically with the diffusion and use of positioning strategies in business marketing. Results of a cross-sectional study of industrial firms operating within a specific sector of the UK economy are presented and a number...