I. The Way of Brand Positioning for Service-oriented Chain Enterprises
What is positioning? We generally use the term "positioning" in the following five senses:
1. Target Market Positioning (shortened to Market Positioning) refers to a company's identification and selection of target consumers.
Only those potential consumers who can make a profit for the enterprise, and whose needs the enterprise resources can adequately meet, qualify as the company’s target customers. Different target market positioning will lead to different allocations of enterprise resources, ultimately determining the success or failure of the enterprise's growth. For example:
Watsons Personal Care Stores positions its target market as “urban fashionistas aged 18-45.” Therefore, its product range focuses on the needs of this urban fashion group, including cosmetics and skincare products, trendy accessories, health products and medicines, leisure foods, and gifts across four major categories with more than 40细分 kinds. These are unique, creative, interesting, and high-quality products that are difficult to find in other supermarkets or malls. Watsons also employs mainly "creative displays," creating an engaging, enjoyable, fashionable shopping environment that caters to the psychological needs of its target consumers. Currently, Watsons has over 700 stores and more than 10,000 employees in over 100 cities in China, becoming the largest chain retailer of health and beauty products in China.
Another example is "Yihaicar Rental Chain." In its early days, it did not simply copy the model of car rental companies in developed countries (which mainly serve customers traveling or sightseeing in other places who prefer self-driving). Instead, based on China's national conditions (Chinese corporate clients often need cars for senior management in other locations, at which time they require chauffeur services—providing both a car and driver; while Chinese self-driving customers are usually white-collar workers around 30 years old in cities—"people with driving licenses but no cars"—and their main purpose is often short trips around the city during weekends), Yihaicar positioned its target market on "senior corporate executives requiring chauffeur services" and "self-driving license holders." Based on the ratio of these two groups, it appropriately allocated the number of mid-to-high-end business cars and fashionable small-displacement vehicles. Moreover, this effectively complemented its "chauffeur" and "self-driving" business models (enterprises choosing chauffeur services mostly use cars from Monday to Friday, while the same vehicle can be rented out to self-driving users on weekends, thus improving the rental rate). Data shows that the average vehicle rental rate for domestic car rental companies is between 50%-65%, whereas Yihaicar can increase this figure to 65%-90%, and even experience excess demand in some cities. This successful market positioning undoubtedly played a critical role. Currently, Yihaicar has developed personal self-driving businesses in nearly 40 large and medium-sized cities nationwide, and its corporate car rental services cover more than 70 cities, providing comprehensive vehicle solutions for more than 220 Fortune Global 500 enterprises. It has become one of the most extensive service providers in terms of coverage, service outlets, car models, and business scope in the domestic car rental industry.
Let's take a look at the target market positioning of two international fast-food giants:
McDonald's centers on children, then extends to parents and young adults within the family; KFC, on the other hand, centers on young adults, then extends to children and young parents within the family — although both have their market positioning set on urban families, they each emphasize different segments among the three main groups within urban families (children, young parents, and young adults). This subtle difference in market positioning determines many aspects such as restaurant decoration, layout, and product offerings, ultimately leading to a noticeable gap in their growth rates.
From this, we can see that target market positioning is a strategic task for enterprises and must be given due importance. Companies with inappropriate or unclear positioning will inevitably face significant setbacks. For instance, ITAT International Brands, which once expanded to over 700 branches...
(Note: The last part seems incomplete in the original text, so it wasn't fully translated.)
This article is from www.zp-nmg.com