How to position products in packaging bag design planning

Creative positioning strategies play an extremely important role in the entire operation process of packaging design. The creative component of packaging design mainly lies in the strategic creativity of the design. The most basic meaning of creativity is a creative idea, a good idea. Of course, this is not created out of nothing, but a recombination of existing experiences. Shunxingyuan Packaging, a professional flexible packaging manufacturer, believes that positioning strategy is a design strategy with a strategic vision. It is characterized by foresight, purposefulness, targeting, and utilitarianism.

I. Product Positioning Strategy

This refers to determining the position of a company's products in the minds of consumers. Each company's products have their specific market positioning. Specifically, product positioning strategies mainly include the following types:

1. Product Specialization Strategy

That is, the product combination is single, and in the product combination coordinate system, the product is at the origin position - coordinates. For a considerable period of time, Coca-Cola Company implemented a product specialization strategy, providing the same Coca-Cola to consumers worldwide with unified products, packaging, prices, and promotion. To a certain extent, this strategy treats consumer needs as undifferentiated.

2. Product (Functional) Differentiation Strategy

This is to find the unique characteristics that similar products do not have as the focus of creative design. Research on product functions is the first prerequisite for a brand to enter the market and reach consumers. For example, "Bai Jia Hei" cold medicine: the white pills are taken during the day without drowsiness, and the black pills are taken at night for a good night's sleep. Because it is different from traditional cold medicines in terms of product functions and characteristics, especially the pill design and outer packaging design focus on black and white, making it easier for this product to gain a favorable position in the market compared to other similar products. Some similar products have comparable quality, and their expressions are also very close. How to highlight the unique characteristics? No minor characteristics should be overlooked during the design process. For example, the packaging design of Tide, Wei Bai, and Diaoban detergents. The packaging design of most detergents emphasizes cleanliness, freshness, and purity. Therefore, they use green, blue, cyan, and white to highlight their positioning. Tide detergent, however, uses an orange-red series to highlight the product's vitality and efficiency. Since many detergent packages use cool colors, a warm-colored product that contrasts sharply with them will naturally attract attention, like "a single red flower among thousands of green leaves."

3. Product Marginalization Strategy

This refers to the development of product combinations from depth to relevance. Taking Goldlion as an example, its product combination initially only produced men's ties of various grades, specifications, and series. Now its products involve men's and women's wallets, bags, clothing, and other fields, satisfying the needs of men and women in many aspects.

4. Product Diversification Strategy

Product diversification strategy refers to the development of product combinations from relevance to breadth; or from depth to breadth.

II. Product Positioning Overview

Positioning refers to determining the image and status of a company or product in the minds of customers or consumers. This image and status should be unique. However, some people believe that positioning is product positioning. Marketing research and competitive practice show that product positioning alone is no longer enough; it must be expanded from product positioning to marketing positioning.

Five questions that product positioning must address:

Whose needs are being met?

What are their needs?

Do we provide what meets their needs?

How to choose the unique combination point of needs and provision?

How to effectively achieve these needs?

In product positioning, the following content should generally be positioned:

1. Functional Attribute Positioning of Products

What needs does the product mainly meet? What are its main product attributes for consumers?

2. Product Line Positioning

Determine the position of the product in the entire enterprise product line. What kind of product line does this type of product need? That is, solve the problem of the width and depth of the product line.

3. Appearance and Packaging Positioning of Products

The design style, specifications, etc., of the product's appearance and packaging.

4. Product Selling Point Positioning

That is, to extract the product USP (Unique Selling Proposition).

5. Basic Marketing Strategy Positioning of Products

Determine the basic strategy of the product - to be a market leader, challenger, follower, or niche player? And determine the corresponding product pricing strategy, communication strategy, and channel strategy.

6. Brand Attribute Positioning of Products

Mainly examine whether the brand attributes determined by the implementation of the above strategies conflict with the attributes of the enterprise's parent brand. If there is a conflict, how to resolve or adjust it?

To find the right product positioning, enterprises must first find the right consumers and their needs, taking the highlighting of product (service) characteristics as the starting point of positioning and the appropriate satisfaction of consumer needs as the destination of positioning. Generally speaking, product positioning includes: quality positioning, function positioning, price positioning, and appearance positioning.

III. Five-Step Product Positioning Method

Generally speaking, product positioning uses a five-step method: target market positioning (Who), product needs positioning (What), enterprise product testing positioning (IF), product differentiated value point positioning (Which), and marketing mix positioning (How). This method provides an effective implementation model for our product positioning analysis, as shown in the figure below.

1. Target Market Positioning

Target market positioning is a process of market segmentation and target market selection, that is, understanding who to serve (Who). In today's market differentiation, the target customers of any company and any product cannot be everyone. For the process of selecting target customers, it is necessary to determine the standards of market segmentation to segment the overall market, evaluate the segmented market, and finally determine the selected target market.

Target Market Positioning Strategies:

Ignoring differences, only providing one product to the entire market;

Attaching importance to differences, providing different products for each segmented sub-market;

Only selecting one segmented sub-market and providing the corresponding products.

2. Product Needs Positioning

Product demand positioning is the process of understanding needs, that is, satisfying whose needs (What). The product positioning process is the process of segmenting the target market and selecting sub-markets. Here, the segmentation of the target market is the process of segmenting the selected target market and selecting one or several target sub-markets. The determination of the needs of the target market is not based on the category of the product, nor is it based on the surface characteristics of the consumer, but on the needs and value of the customer.

When purchasing a product, customers always seek to obtain a certain value from the product. The product value combination is realized by the product function combination. Different customers have different value demands for products, which requires providing products with the same appeal points. In this link, it is necessary to investigate needs, and the acquisition of these needs can guide new product development or product improvement.

3. Product Test Positioning

Enterprise product test positioning is to conduct product creativity or product testing for the enterprise. That is, to determine what kind of products the enterprise provides or whether the products provided meet the needs (IF). This link mainly involves the design or improvement of the enterprise's own products. By using symbols or physical forms to display the characteristics of products (undeveloped and developed), examine consumers' understanding, preferences, and acceptance of product concepts. This stage of testing research needs to explore deeply from the psychological level to the behavioral level to obtain the overall acceptance of a certain product concept by consumers.

Content Tips:

Examine the explainability and spreadability of product concepts;

Market development analysis of similar products:

Correlation analysis between product attribute positioning and consumer needs:

Analysis of consumers' selection and purchase intentions.

4. Differentiation Value Point Positioning

Differentiation value point positioning needs to solve the combined problem of target needs, products provided by enterprises, and characteristics of competitors. At the same time, it is necessary to consider how these unique points are integrated with other marketing attributes (Which). Based on the above research, combined with consumer-based competitive research, marketing attribute positioning is carried out. General product unique selling proposition (USP) positioning methods include positioning from product unique value characteristics, positioning from product problem-solving characteristics, positioning from product usage occasions and timing, positioning from consumer types, positioning from competitive brand comparisons, positioning from product category detachment, and comprehensive positioning. On this basis, corresponding differentiated brand image positioning and promotion are needed.

5. Marketing Mix Positioning

Marketing mix positioning is how to meet needs (How). It is the process of carrying out marketing mix positioning. After determining the needs of target customers and the products provided by the enterprise, it is necessary to design a marketing mix plan and implement this plan to ensure that the positioning is in place. This is not only the process of brand promotion, but also the process of organic combination of product price, channel strategy, and communication strategy. As Philip Kotler said, solving the positioning problem can help enterprises solve the marketing mix problem. Marketing mix—product, price, channel, promotion—is the result of the application of positioning strategies and tactics.

Often, low prices are used as a measure to evaluate the quality of a product. In this case, determining the price will determine the brand level and also affect the evaluation of other characteristics. "If we summarize the price of a product as a triangle, then in this triangle, it is not the lowest, but the middle trapezoid. This all depends on the product's efficacy, characteristics, target consumer groups, and market positioning of related similar products. The purpose of price positioning is to promote sales and increase profits, because different classes have different consumption levels, and any price has a corresponding consumer group. For example, "Goldlion, a man's world," from its price positioning, is a mid-to-high-end men's clothing product. The company believes that although the price of the product is a little higher, it is a symbol of a person's identity, and a higher price also has a corresponding consumer group. In the design of the product's outer packaging, in order to highlight its brand positioning. Consumers see not only the natural value of the brand owned by the product, but also its spiritual value.

In some cases, the process of being in place is also a process of repositioning. Because when product differentiation is difficult to achieve, it must be positioned through marketing differentiation. Today, if you launch any new product that sells well for less than a month, imitations will immediately appear on the market, and marketing differentiation is much more difficult than product imitation. Therefore, product positioning alone is far from enough; enterprises must expand from product positioning to the entire marketing positioning.