Focus Group Research

How To Create The Unfair Advantage In Positioning Your Product For Mass Market Sales
by Paul Losee, President, Decoding.com.

Over twenty years of designing and positioning
products for the mass market has caused me to
become very suspicious of the traditional "Five P's"
( Product, Position, Price, Packaging, Promotion)
driving the hoopla and hype surrounding most product
positioning campaigns. I'd like to offer a formula,
admittedly difficult, but if followed can guarantee a big
win as you position your product in the mass market
for high volume sales.


	You must be the low cost producer before you can play the mass market commodity game. If not, your competition will ultimately beat you out. Low cost and high volume are synonymous. Without high volume you will never remain the low cost producer. High volume means attracting and appealing to high numbers of customers.

	The product must provide a real benefit to solve a tangible problem. No gimmicks, just plain performance.This performance must be clearly perceived as a benefit by the customer. If you have to teach them about the benefit, you'll lose. You don't have the time and money to train customers about benefits. When they pick up the product, they've got to "get it" in about one second. It helps if no other product provides that benefit, although not absolutely necessary.

	The customer needs to get a "feeling" about the product of "hey, I want it" as they experience the product correctly advertised and positioned in the retail environment. This is a FEELING. It's not rational, it's emotional. If you ask the customer why they feel that way about the product, you'll get a rational answer that won't be true. Feelings are not logical. They arise from within that part of the brain that is not logic constrained. Your customer won't know, but you MUST know. If you don't know, you won't be able to position the product correctly to "trigger" the emotions that creates the customer's feeling of "I want it."

It is best if parameters of the Unfair Advantage Wheel come together as a
result of research to guide both product design and positioning. Sorry to say,
most products are conceived in the designer's mind and thrown across the
fence to the marketing department with a "hope" of great positioning for mass
market appeal. Most of these hopes are never realized.

You'll save big money in advertising expenses and probably end up getting promoted if you design your new product and positioning strategy using the following ten point check sheet:

If you can answer YES to each of these ten questions, I can pretty much guarantee you will have a big winner with your product in the mass consumer market. The unfair advantage comes because you understand WHY your customers are buying your product even when they can't articulate why. To your competition, your hold on the customer will seem "magical." Your customers will be saying, "Hey, I like these guys. They gave me what I wanted even before I knew what to ask for!"

To those with a lot of "no" answers, take heart. There's always the niche markets. You'll still probably make money with your product. Difference is, it's hard. You'll earn it. And you'll probably decide that on the next product, you'll do it right from the start.

Good luck!

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I would like to begin by introducing the concept of The Unfair Advantage Wheel. Think of this wheel as having three spokes: (1) Product, (2) Product Benefits, and (3) The Emotional Hook. If all spokes are filled in and working together, your product will literally fly off the shelves in the mass market retail environment...
If one of the spokes is missing, you’ll experience a "flat tire" and be severely handicapped in trying to create sales in the high volume mass market. Knowing up front your wheel profile allows you to determine if your product is ready for the mass market or whether you should position it for niche markets where you'll be much safer.