NICHER: An approach to identifying defensible product positions

Abstract

The concept of defensible product positioning is developed from the special case of market niching. A defensible position is one which remains viable even after subsequent competitive entry. The flavor of the niching problem is retained by using positioning as the key to defensibility. A defensible positioning strategy may involve targeting multiple segments, introducing multiple products or both. In some markets, defensible positions may not even exist. Two procedures, NICHER-SCM and NICHER-PCM, were developed to identify defensible positions under single and probabilistic choice models. These procedures represent an advance over existing methods which do not consider the effect of future entrants on the new product.