Brand Positioning Strategy -Walmart, An Example

Shah Mohammed
6 min readJun 18, 2019

The first step for any new business is to ponder how to occupy space inside a target consumer’s mind, which is called ‘Brand Positioning’. It can also be termed as a consumer’s perception of a brand with respect to competing brands.

Flickr/Mike Mozart

Why does your brand need to enter his or her mind? If you ask a consumer to name a cola drink, ‘Coke’ name will spurt out. If you ask the consumer to name a toothpaste that comes immediately to the mind, most probably, Colgate name would pop out. If you ask about a photocopying brand, ‘Xerox’ name will spurt out. If you ask them the name of an energy drink, the red bull name will rush out. If you ask an Indian to name a noodles brand, most of the time ‘Maggi’ name would jet out.

Why do these brand names stay at the top of the consumer’s mind so that it can be recalled immediately?

Coke is the first cooldrink to enter the consumer’s mind under Cola category. Seven-up is the first cooldrink under the Un-cola category. Redbull is the first cooldrink under ‘energy drink’ category. Xerox is the first brand under the ‘photocopying’ category.

Being №1 in a consumer’s mind will help a business to grab a major market share and have a sustainable business. The above brands show that the easiest way to get into a person’s mind is to be first.

So, how can a business enter a consumer’s mind by being first? The business has to create a new category that doesn’t exist in a consumer’s mind.

What is the need for categories? Our human brains are wired for categorisation to help us remember things. Without that, we would be quickly overwhelmed by the vast amount of information.

Nicole Branan writes in ‘Scientific American’, Picture a living thing — say, a…

--

--