Marketing and The Unique Selling Proportion
This term, although it has crept into the jargon of marketing as a peculiarly modern concept, is in fact quite a down-to-earth way of describing what every astute trader has always tried to give his merchandise -a characteristic that differentiates it from all others in that category. Why? Because if he can not persuade potential customers that his product -be it a shop, restaurant, pub or bar of shop – has some attribute that others can not offer, then the only way he can win, and keep, a share of the market is by selling cheaper.
Naturally, no businessman wants to sell for less that he has to. And even price competition has its obvious than he has to. And even price competition has its physical limits – as we shall see when we come to deal with the various methods of discount trading.
So the natural line of approach is to find an attribute in the product, or a set of attributes, that will enable one to claim a special pemium for the product, the result of its possesing a special character that lifts it out of too close a comparasion with any other item in that product field.
In saying this, we are simply bringing to the surface one of the central factors that determine the economic value of a product to the comsumer. We are here at the very heart of the marketing problem -that matching the product with the subjective factors that will decide the acceptance of it, and the value the consumer places on it. Unless this matching can be done with fair acceptability, there is no safe basis for marketing planning.
We say subjective factors because when a society has progressed beyond the stage of crude satisfactions-food, shelter, warmth- it enters the stage where business directions are dictated by the need to cater for subjective drives: mood, fashion, prejudice, fantasy, and where values are no longer assessable, therefore, in the classical terms of simple demand and supply.