Unique selling proposition

Uniqueness is rare, and coming up with a continuous stream of products with unique features is, in practice, extremely difficult

A unique selling proposition (USP) is a description of the qualities that are unique to a particular product or service and that differentiate it in a way which will make customers purchase it rather than its rivals.

Marketing experts used to insist that every product and service had to have a USP, at least one unique feature that could be distilled into a 60-second sales spiel, the equivalent of a single written paragraph. But this idea was usurped by the view that what really matters in marketing a product or service is its positioning, where it sits on the spectrum of customer needs. Shampoos, for instance, claim to meet all sorts of different customer needs and sit in all sorts of different positions—the need to wash dry hair or greasy hair, dark hair or blond hair, or the need to wash hair frequently or not so frequently. Few of them, however, can claim to have a unique selling proposition. All of them clean hair.

Uniqueness is rare, and coming up with a continuous stream of products with unique features is, in practice, extremely difficult. Philip Kotler says that the difficulty firms have in creating functional uniqueness has made them “focus on having a unique emotional selling proposition (an ESP) instead of a USP”. He gives the example of the Ferrari car and the Rolex watch. Neither has a distinctive functional uniqueness, but each has a unique emotional association in the consumer’s mind.

Uniqueness can be sought in a number of ways:

Read more . . .

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Tags: emotional selling proposition, marketing, philip kotler, unique selling proposition, unique selling proposition usp, uniqueness, uniqueness is rare

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