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Research Article

A Study on Service Positioning Strategies

Lee, Mungyu · Kim, Jongbae · Lee, Ingu

Published: January 1998 · Vol. 27, No. 1 · pp. 221-239
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Abstract

As the focus of business management has shifted from production-centered to marketing-centered and then again to service-centered approaches, research on service marketing has become increasingly active. However, research to date has mostly focused on the measurement and management of service quality. This study aims to present a methodological framework for service positioning, which belongs to a relatively new field. Research on positioning, which originated in advertising, has been extensively conducted in the tangible product domain, but in the service domain—where physical attributes as tangible cues do not exist—research has been insufficient despite its importance due to difficulties in application. In this study, service positioning variables were extracted for retail store services, and a perceptual map was constructed using these variables to identify the position of each retail store on the map. Consumer satisfaction at each position was then analyzed to suggest future positioning strategy directions. Finally, the practical implications of the methodological framework experimentally proposed in this study and directions for future research are discussed.