Etsy and Market Positioning
Etsy has done their positioning well: "Your place to buy and sell all things handmade."
Positioning. How important is it?
You need to carve out a place in the minds of your customers. Upstart marketplaces are up against something: how can I compete against something as huge as eBay? Well, positioning is the answer. And that answer is: Don’t compete - coexist.
Positioning gives you a chance to tell your story to buyers. Where you fit in. eBay’s positioning is the ability to find or sell anything online. One problem with this mission is that if you are looking for specific kinds of things, sometimes it becomes hard to find just exactly the right unique thing. Etsy’s place in the market is handmade things — which I would definitely think is an underserved niche in a market where everything has been commoditized.
By carving out a space in the buyer’s mind separate from eBay, etsy can find a place for itself in a market even where there are several giants (eBay, Amazon, etc..).
How is your company unique? Does it have a clearly defined position in your customer’s minds?
The Pragmatic Marketing guys have a lot of good articles on the topic of positioning, for further reading…