Brand Repositioning

As we can see from the past and current situation, the marketplace is always changing and not just about purchasing and buying between consumers and sellers. More and more firms begin to concentrate on creating a positive image for a product. A firm can choose several positioning strategies, including strengthening the current position, repositioning or try to reposition the competition. (Hartline,2005) Brand repositioning is one of the most effective ways for a firm to solve tough situation. A firm should reposition its brand under the following four circumstances: when the first position is wrong, when there is strong competition in the marketplace, when the target consumer is to be changed, and to rebuild a brand’s personality.
Every firm knows that “Positioning” is one of the most important steps for itself. But what is “Positioning”? Marshall (2006,p.213) states that “positioning is developing a marketing strategy aimed at influencing how a particular market segment perceives a good or service in comparison to the competition.” Then brand repositioning is redoing a product’s position in order to adapt to the changes of marketplace. So when a firm realized that the first position of their product is not suitable for the marketplace, such as consumers have a poor response to their product and sales results have a large gap between sales forecast.(Marshall,2006) Apparently, it is the right time to reposition their brand. Even though the first positioning is very crucial to a firm which is also means establish the value of a brand as well, the marketplace is always changing, the position of a brand cannot be existed forever. If a firm should reposition, the ways to solve this problem are research, analysis marketplace again and have a sensitive olfaction of marketplace. For example, Marlboro succeed to become one of the most famous cigarette brands in the world after it changed the target from woman to man. (Solomon, 2006) The IKEA in China changed its position