Brand Positioning Constructs and Indicators for Measurement of Consumer's Positive Psychology toward Brands

The beginning of term positioning was initially came into limelight in 1972, when Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote "The positioning era cometh" and "Positioning cuts through chaos in market place". The full - fledged concept of positioning came in year the 1981 in a book of Al Ries and Jack Trout "Positioning the battle of mind How to be seen and heard in the crowded market place". "Positioning starts with product. a service. a company, institution or even a person" (Ries & Trout, 1981). Moreover, it is contended that positioning concept has its origin or background in the packaged goods, where it was product positioning. Furthermore, pointed by (Ries & Trout, 1981, 1986) that, in 1950s there was product era which shifted to image era and now finally it has transformed into positioning era. For every brand to succeed at the market place positioning is only the way to break the advertisement clutter, which has now become so high. But in actual practice, marketer are going wrong way, as they are running more advertisement (Sengupta, 2005). That's why there are so many irrelevant company's promotional messages comes in e-mail box. We can see the ads on parking, hospitals, hotels etc. which sometimes creates negativity of certain brands, because of annoying ads (Goldstein et. al, 2013). Now, what could be done? How to come out of the ambiguous situation of the market? What strategy to follow? Answering these questions, in the marketing terms, there is no such kind ofthing prevail as a product or service at the market place for long time until finds a space in the consumer's mind (Sengupta, 2005) with strong positioning of the brand (Schultz et al., 1981) rather answering the more clutter with more clutter of ads (Rotfeld, 2006). The positioning decision in terms of brand is the crucial decision, as it is instrumental to customers' perception and choice decisions (Aaker & Shansby, 1982). Positioning has become important for the brands in advertisement as it serves in measurement of purchaser's awareness (Amott, 1994). Fundamentally, the essence of the concept of positioning is to put the brand in the mental space of the consumer (Sengupta, 2005; Sagar et ah, 2006; Malik & Sudhakar, 2014). The unique market position of brand can translates it into sales, because "positioning is the psyche of customers" (Murthy, 2010), under which only well positioned brand comes as top of the mind.Purpose and method adoptedThe aim of the study is to explore the latent variables and indicators to measure the positioning of the brand in different situations. For this, the content analysis on previous literature in popular journals and websites were adopted as the methodological framework and placed forward for theoretical base.Relevant literatureIn the study of (Sagar et al., 2006) five fundamental dimensions were found as the elements or constructs of brand positioning. Further, one additional dimension brand salience stated by (Miller & Berry, 1998; Dawes, Mundt, & Sharp, 2009) cited in (Malik and Sudhakar, 2014) who contended that brand salience involves improving the effectiveness of advertising and improving a brand's position in the consideration set. Further stated by (Daye, 2010) that 'it is the memory of brand and its linkage to other memory structure of consumer in a buying situation'. Hence, the theoretical dimension comes to six, which can be used for measurement of the psychological aspect of the brand, as whether the brand is positioning positively or not.Latent variables of brand positioning and indicatorsBrand Identity: Brand identity is the way, which the company wants to project itself to the customers (Sagar, 2009). The indicators of brand identity provided by (Kapferer, 1992) for measurement of brand identity are (physique, personality, culture, relationship, reflection, self-image) of the brand. The identity of the brand can be measured according to the six prism of (Kapferer, 1992) -* What are the physical attributes of brand? …