MT450 Unit 4 Fountain Pen Positioning Statement Example

Against the Disposable Pen, Not the Rival Heritage Maker: An MT450 Unit 4 Positioning Statement

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT450: Brand Management Strategy

Unit 4 Positioning Statement

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Tremont Pen Company, its rivals, its prices and the survey are composite; the sources cited are real.

Part One: Choosing the Frame of Reference

Keller et al. (2002) put the frame of reference first: the alternatives a buyer weighs a brand against decide which of its claims count as different at all. Tremont, the Model 40 maker whose audit and associations were studied in Units 2 and 3, could be placed in two frames.

The first frame is heritage fountain pens. Tremont is one of six American and European makers selling pens between $120 and $250 with steel and gold nibs, long company histories and similar packaging. In this frame Tremont is a respectable member of a crowded group, and most of its claims are shared.

The second frame is premium gel and rollerball pens, the refillable or disposable pens sold in office supply and stationery shops for $2 to $4 each. In the Unit 3 survey, 48 percent of the 180 respondents who did not own a Tremont had bought premium gel pens for daily writing in the past year, more than had bought any fountain pen. For many buyers who write by hand every day, journal keepers, students and people who take meeting notes by hand, the real alternative to a Tremont is not another fountain pen but a box of gel pens.

The Cost-per-Year Comparison

The second frame allows a comparison that the first does not. A Model 40 costs $160. Tremont's service records show that owners who write daily send a pen back for nib service about twice in twenty-five years, at $12 in postage each time, and a heavy writer uses about one $14 bottle of ink a year. Over twenty-five years the pen therefore costs about $184 plus $350 in ink, roughly $21 a year. A daily writer who uses two premium gel pens a month at about $2.20 each spends about $53 a year and discards twenty-four pens.

A daily writer spends less each year on a fountain pen kept for decades than on the gel pens it replaces.

The comparison has limits. Many buyers will never keep a pen for twenty-five years, and the fountain pen costs more in the first year. The paper treats the figure as a reason to choose the frame, not as a claim to print without qualification.

Part Two: Points of Parity

Points of parity are handled in two columns. Category parity covers what any fountain pen must deliver to be considered at all: reliable ink flow, no leaking in a pocket or bag, a choice of nib widths and a cap that seals so the nib does not dry out. Tremont meets all four. Competitive parity covers what the frame's alternative does well and Tremont must neutralize. Against gel pens, the alternative's strength is convenience: a gel pen writes the moment it is uncapped and never needs filling. Messy filling, which 38 percent of survey respondents link to Tremont, is therefore the parity problem in this frame. The Unit 2 recommendation to ship every pen with a cartridge, so that filling from a bottle is a choice rather than a requirement, is the minimum needed to reach parity on convenience.

Part Three: Testing Three Candidate Differences

Keller et al. (2002) propose testing each candidate point of difference on three criteria: whether customers find it desirable, whether the company can deliver it, and whether it differentiates the brand from the alternatives in the chosen frame.

Hand-tuned craftsmanship is desirable, with favorability of plus 1.8 in Unit 3, and deliverable, since every nib is tested by hand in Fort Wayne. It does not differentiate. Every heritage maker makes the same claim, giving uniqueness of minus 2, and in the gel-pen frame buyers do not think about craftsmanship at all.

Made in Indiana is deliverable and differentiating, with the highest uniqueness score of any association at plus 19. Its desirability is moderate, plus 1.1, and concentrated among buyers over fifty; younger daily writers in the survey rated it near neutral.

The lifetime factory nib service passes all three tests. It is the most desirable association in the Unit 3 survey, at plus 2.6. It is deliverable: the service bench in Fort Wayne handled about 4,100 pens last year and has capacity for about 9,000 with its current three technicians. And it differentiates in both frames, but decisively in the second, where the alternative is designed to be thrown away. It is also the claim on which the cost-per-year arithmetic depends, since a pen that cannot be repaired cannot be kept for twenty-five years.

The Positioning Statement

For people who write by hand every day, Tremont is the fountain pen that costs less each year than the disposable pens it replaces, because any Tremont can be mailed back to Fort Wayne and set right for as long as its owner keeps writing.

A shorter line for the sales team and retail staff: one pen, kept writing for life.

Why This Statement

The statement names a target, the daily writer, rather than all pen buyers. It names a frame by implication, disposable pens, rather than heritage makers. It offers one point of difference, the nib service, and a reason to believe it, the factory address customers can actually mail. Park et al. (1986) argue that a brand concept should be chosen deliberately and kept consistent over time, so the statement leaves craftsmanship and heritage to support it rather than compete with it. Keller and Swaminathan (2020) describe a good positioning as one that is credible to customers, and the cost figure and service record supply the credibility. The statement does not claim that Tremont writes better than its heritage rivals, which customers would not believe and the evidence does not show.

Checking the Statement With Buyers

Before the statement goes to the sales team, it should be read to two small groups: a dozen Tremont owners and a dozen daily writers who use gel pens and have never owned a fountain pen. Each person would be asked three things: what kind of person the statement describes, what it promises and whether they believe the promise. If owners recognize themselves and gel-pen users understand the cost argument without having it explained, the statement is working. If gel-pen users hear only that a fountain pen is expensive, the cost-per-year figure needs to appear beside the statement wherever it is used, on the box insert and the product page. If either group doubts that the nib service exists, that doubt is itself evidence for the Unit 2 recommendation to put the service in front of every buyer at the moment of purchase. The check costs a few hours and protects a sentence the company may use for years.

References

Keller, K. L., Sternthal, B., & Tybout, A. (2002). Three questions you need to ask about your brand. Harvard Business Review, 80(9), 80-89.

Keller, K. L., & Swaminathan, V. (2020). Strategic brand management: Building, measuring, and managing brand equity (5th ed.). Pearson.

Park, C. W., Jaworski, B. J., & MacInnis, D. J. (1986). Strategic brand concept-image management. Journal of Marketing, 50(4), 135-145. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298605000401