Product Positioning
Given the number of responses in one of my previous posts, there really is only one person that reads this page. So, as you may or may not know, Sean, Ellen and I are in school now. Our two classes this semester are Quality Management and Engineering, which is neither, and Marketing.
A lot of our assignments are in the form of case studies for which we have to write reports. For Marketing, this involves trying to define the market for a particular product, how to position the product in the market, and given this and other information, create a marketing strategy for the product.
While reading The Daily WTF’s recent Pop-up Potpourri, I came across this image:![[water = HO2]](http://img.thedailywtf.com/images/200610/gmh20.gif "[water = HO2]")
It’s a screen shot from GM’s site promoting a $500 student discount on used GM vehicles. Now, there’s a problem with this image, so stop reading for a moment, Sean, and look a bit more closely at the picture.
Do you see it? Well, if not, it’s in their picture of the water molecule. Apparently, GM thinks water is not H2O, but HO2. Now, if you read the forum comments regarding the advertisement, most people are poking fun at GM for the error. Initially I agreed that it was a really stupid mistake. Thinking about it some more, though, I think it may be intentional. As we all know, GM’s cars aren’t exactly known for their reliability. If you need any proof, just take a look at how they’re doing compared to, say, Nissan.
As we can see from the graph, GM hasn’t been doing so well. Losing ground to companies like Nissan and Toyota. Their remaining market, or as we call in Marketing, their Target Market, is now reduced to people that are rather unintelligent but cost conscious. In other words, people who think water is HO2.
