The risk of repositioning a brand
Every single brand has a different place in people’s minds, which is its positioning. It may happen that, either the company has realized that the ideas they have been trying to transmit don’t match with the image the customers have about it, or just because of the competitors, market changes or profit expectations, that positioning has to be changed.
This process is more complex than when a brand first goes to the market, because it means transforming customers mind structures, something terribly complicated and risky for a company.
Among these risks, we find mainly these two:
– After carrying out a great economical effort in communication, pricing policy, distribution channels… you don’t achieve the goal and customers keep having the same perception than they had before the whole investment.
– A risk even bigger: placing your brand in no-man’s land. A percentage of the people do get the new message, but the other part still has the old idea about you. On top of that, there are certain people who are now completely lost and have a really confusing image about your company.
This being said, it must be clear that a repositioning strategy is not automatically a bad thing. However as it’s something where you need to dedicate a lot of resources, it has to be perfectly studied and planned so that the probabilities of success are the highest.
According to Jack Trout, one of the greatest experts on this matter, repositioning is mandatory when customer’s attitudes have changed, technology is far ahead of the actual products and these have diverted from real customer perception.
Before finishing, I want to bring you a link of the greatest internet site about repositioning. If you feel interested, it’s time to start researching more: