Quick answer
Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller define positioning as “the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market” (Marketing Management). Al Ries and Jack Trout, who made the word famous, put it from the customer’s side: “positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect” (Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, 1981). David Aaker narrows it to the part of a brand’s identity “that is to be actively communicated to the target audience and that demonstrates an advantage over competing brands” (Building Strong Brands, 1996).
The two most quoted definitions of positioning sound as if they agree. Read them side by side and they’re having an argument.
Kotler and Keller describe positioning as something a company does: it designs an offering and an image. Ries and Trout say the work only counts somewhere the company doesn’t control, inside the prospect’s head. Kotler’s version reads like a brief for the marketing team. Ries and Trout’s reads like the result that comes back.
I think you need both, and every definition below sits somewhere between them. They’re quoted from the original books and articles, in the order they appeared. If you’ve read my post on positioning statement examples, this is the theory underneath that test.
Jack Trout (1969): where the word came from
The first use of “positioning” in the marketing sense is traced to an article by Jack Trout in Industrial Marketing, June 1969, titled “”Positioning” is a game people play in today’s me-too market place”. That line is the headline, not a sentence from the article.
Most records, including the authors’ own company sites, credit the 1969 piece to Trout alone. Al Ries joined him on later articles and on the 1981 book, which is probably why the article often gets credited to “Ries and Trout”.
Ries and Trout (1981): positioning happens in the mind
“Positioning starts with a product. A piece of merchandise, a service, a company, an institution, or even a person. Perhaps yourself. But positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect.”
Al Ries and Jack Trout, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (1981; 20th anniversary edition, 2001, pages 2 to 3)
Most people quote the two middle sentences and stop. The opening lines are worth keeping. Positioning applies to a company, an institution, “or even a person. Perhaps yourself.” They were writing about personal positioning more than twenty years before LinkedIn existed.
What I take from this definition is where the score is kept. A team can write a sharp positioning statement and agree on it in a meeting, and it still means nothing until a customer would describe the brand the same way without being prompted.
Kotler and Keller: positioning as a design job
“Positioning is the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market. The goal is to locate the brand in the minds of consumers to maximize the potential benefit to the firm.”
Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, Marketing Management (wording as printed in the 2009 edition co-authored with Lu, page 218)
Two small words get changed in most copies of this definition. The original says “distinctive”, not “distinct”, and “the mind of the target market”, singular.
This is the definition to work from if you’re the one doing the positioning, because it names what you can design: the offering and the image. The catch is that customers form a position from everything they run into, including parts of the business that marketing never touches, like the delivery, the support call or the invoice.
Kotler and Armstrong: product position
In Principles of Marketing, Kotler and Gary Armstrong define a product’s position as the way consumers define the product on important attributes: “the place the product occupies in consumers’ minds relative to competing products” (13th edition, 2010, page 178).
A position only exists next to someone else’s, which is why the definition ends “relative to competing products”. If you describe your brand without naming what a customer would compare it to, you’ve described the product, and you haven’t positioned it yet.
David Aaker (1996): the part you actively communicate
“Brand position is the part of the brand identity and value proposition that is to be actively communicated to the target audience and that demonstrates an advantage over competing brands.”
David A. Aaker, Building Strong Brands (1996)
Aaker separates two things most teams blur. Brand identity is everything a brand stands for. Brand position is the slice of it you push right now, and it qualifies only if it shows an advantage. For a small team this is a relief. You don’t have to say everything the brand stands for in every campaign. You have to say the part that beats the alternative.
Keller, Sternthal and Tybout (2002): points of parity and points of difference
In “Three Questions You Need to Ask About Your Brand” (Harvard Business Review, September 2002), Kevin Lane Keller, Brian Sternthal and Alice Tybout start from the observation that people who position brands have traditionally concentrated on points of difference, the benefits that set a brand apart. Their argument is that points of parity, the things a brand has to match to compete in its category at all, deserve the same attention.
This is the most practical idea on the page. A brand that only shouts its difference can still lose because a customer assumes it’s missing something basic.
April Dunford: positioning for products
“Positioning defines how your product is a leader at delivering something that a well-defined set of customers cares a lot about.”
April Dunford, “A quickstart guide to positioning“, aprildunford.com
Dunford, the author of Obviously Awesome (2019), has phrased this a few different ways across her book, her site and her talks, so quote the version you actually read and link to it. All her versions start from a defined group of customers and what they care about, which is where I’d start too.
Positioning definitions compared
| Author | Year | Source | Positioning is… | Who acts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jack Trout | 1969 | Industrial Marketing | “a game people play in today’s me-too market place” (headline) | The marketer |
| Ries and Trout | 1981 | Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind | what you do to the mind of the prospect | The prospect’s mind |
| David Aaker | 1996 | Building Strong Brands | the part of brand identity actively communicated, showing an advantage | The brand team |
| Keller, Sternthal and Tybout | 2002 | Harvard Business Review | points of difference plus points of parity | The brand team |
| Kotler and Keller | 2009 edition | Marketing Management | designing offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind | The company |
| Kotler and Armstrong | 2010 edition | Principles of Marketing | the place a product occupies in consumers’ minds relative to competitors | The consumer |
| April Dunford | 2021 (site) | aprildunford.com | how your product leads at delivering what a defined set of customers cares about | The company, for named customers |
Where they agree, and where they split
Every definition puts the position in the customer’s head. They split on who does the work. Kotler and Keller, Aaker and Dunford write for the person designing the brand. Ries and Trout write about the customer, and leave you to work backwards.
For an exam answer, Kotler and Keller’s sentence is the one examiners expect, with Ries and Trout as the classic contrast. For a homepage or a pitch, I’d start from Ries and Trout’s idea of the mind as the scoreboard and use Dunford’s wording to write the line: name the customers, name what they care about, and name what you’re better at than the alternative.
Common misquotes to avoid
- The 1969 Industrial Marketing article is credited to Jack Trout alone.
- “”Positioning” is a game people play in today’s me-too market place” is a headline, not a quote from inside the article.
- Kotler and Keller wrote “distinctive place in the mind”, not “distinct place in the minds”.
- Aaker’s sentence ends “over competing brands”. “Competitive brands” is a paraphrase.
- Dunford’s definition exists in several wordings. None of them is the single “official” one, so cite where you found it.
Frequently asked questions
What is brand positioning according to Philip Kotler?
Kotler and Keller define positioning as “the act of designing the company’s offering and image to occupy a distinctive place in the mind of the target market” (Marketing Management).
Who coined the term positioning in marketing?
Jack Trout, in an Industrial Marketing article in June 1969. Al Ries and Trout later wrote Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind (1981).
What is positioning according to Ries and Trout?
“Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect.”
What is the difference between brand identity and brand position?
David Aaker treats brand position as the part of the brand identity and value proposition that is actively communicated to the target audience and shows an advantage over competing brands. Identity is the whole; position is the part you push.
What are points of parity and points of difference?
Points of difference are the benefits that set a brand apart. Points of parity are what a brand has to match to compete in its category. Keller, Sternthal and Tybout argued in Harvard Business Review (2002) that positioning needs both.
The quickest check for any positioning line is the one in my post on positioning statement examples: delete the brand name and ask whether your closest competitor could sign what’s left. If they could, the line describes the category, and the position is still empty.
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