You met your target segment in Module 3; now you give that customer a reason to choose your organisation. That reason is the value proposition: a clear statement of the benefit a target customer gets, why it matters to them and why your organisation delivers it better than the alternatives.

Benefits, not features. A feature is what the product has or does: "a 2,000mAh battery", "open until 10pm". A benefit is what that means for the customer: "your phone lasts the whole festival", "you can shop after your late shift". Customers buy benefits. To get from one to the other, ask "so what?" until you reach something the customer would care about.

Jobs, pains and gains. Value Proposition Design (Osterwalder, Pigneur, Bernarda and Smith, 2014) gives three useful prompts. Jobs are what the customer is trying to get done. Pains are what annoys them or gets in the way. Gains are what would delight them. Fill each one from your topic 2 research, not from guesses. If a pain has no evidence behind it, mark it "assumed".

The alternatives. Customers always have a choice: a competitor, a different kind of product, making do, or doing nothing at all. "Doing nothing" is often the strongest rival. Name the alternatives your target customer really considers, in their words.

The proposition statement. Keep it to one or two sentences a customer would recognise. A simple frame: for (target), (offer) gives (main benefit), because (proof only you can offer). The proof matters most. Without it, you have a slogan.

UK example: Greggs and the vegan sausage roll. Greggs launched a vegan sausage roll on 3 January 2019, timed for Veganuary. A brand known for sausage rolls now offered its best-known product to people who don't eat meat. In its preliminary results on 7 March 2019, Greggs reported company-managed shop like-for-like sales up 9.6% in the seven weeks to 16 February 2019, "helped in part by publicity surrounding launch of the vegan-friendly sausage roll". Notice what Greggs claimed and what it didn't: it said the launch helped, not that it caused all the growth. The lesson for you is the principle: the proposition stayed familiar (a Greggs sausage roll) while the product widened who it was for.

Test your draft on the target from topic 3. Would that customer, in particular, recognise their own job, pain or gain in it? If it would suit anyone, it isn't yet written for them.

A proposition says what you offer. Positioning is the place you want that offer to hold in the target customer's mind, compared with the alternatives. You don't fully control it: customers decide where you sit. But you can choose where to aim, and make every message point the same way.

The positioning statement. A widely used template, popularised by Geoffrey Moore in Crossing the Chasm (1991), runs in five parts:

• For (the target customer)
• who (their need or problem)
• our offer is (what it is, in plain words)
• that (the main benefit)
• unlike (the main alternative), (what makes yours different).

It is an internal tool, not an advert. Nobody outside the organisation needs to see it, but everyone inside should be able to say it.

Choosing the alternatives. Use the ones the customer really weighs up, from your topic 2 research and the competitor snapshot in Module 1. If you describe real competitors, describe them fairly and only with facts you can check.

The positioning map. Draw two lines crossing at the middle, one for each attribute customers care about, such as price and convenience, or freshness and choice. Then place your organisation and each alternative on the map. Two rules keep it honest:

• Choose attributes from your research, not ones that happen to flatter you.
• Place the alternatives as the customer sees them, not as you'd like them to be.

Gaps on the map. An empty corner can be an opportunity. It can also be empty because nobody wants that combination. Before you claim it, check your evidence says customers value it.

Claims you can back up. Every word in the "that" and "unlike" lines is a claim. If your organisation can't prove it today, either change the offer or change the words. Claims return in depth in Module 5, where you'll check them against the advertising rules.

When you have a statement and a map, read them side by side. If the map shows you sitting among the alternatives rather than apart from them, the "unlike" line needs work.

You now have a proposition. The marketing mix is everything the organisation controls that shapes what the customer actually gets. The original four Ps (product, price, place, promotion) were extended for services by Booms and Bitner (1981), who added people, process and physical evidence. Together they are the 7Ps.

Learners often treat the 7Ps as a form to fill in, one box at a time. Here they do a different job: they test one proposition. Customers judge a promise by the evidence around it. If the advert says "premium" and the website looks careless, they believe the website.

One question for every P. Ask each one: does this deliver the proposition?

Physical evidence means the tangible signs that let customers judge a service before or after they use it: packaging, a website, a receipt, a uniform.

Gaps and contradictions. A gap is a P that doesn't help the promise. A contradiction is worse: a P that says the opposite, such as a "fast" service with a slow checkout. Mark both. Then pick the one that would hurt most if a customer noticed it.

Read the worked example later in this topic before you start. It takes Larkfield Coffee Roasters, the course's fictional roaster, through all seven Ps.

AI activity. Ask an AI assistant for five alternative value propositions for your organisation's target segment. Then score each one against your own customer evidence from topic 2: does it match a job, pain or gain your research found? Can your organisation prove it today? Which P would contradict it? Write down which proposition survives and why. The AI writes fluent propositions quickly, but it doesn't know your customers. Your evidence is the judge.

When you write your own seven lines, write what is true today, not what you plan. The gaps are your organisation's to-do list.

Your proposition belongs to one product or service. Most organisations offer several, under one name or many. This lesson steps back to see the whole picture.

Brand architecture is how an organisation's brands and sub-brands relate to each other. David Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaler (Brand Leadership, 2000) describe a spectrum. In outline, there are three common choices:

• A master brand: one name across everything, with products described rather than separately branded. Each launch borrows the master brand's trust, and each mistake can damage it.
• Endorsed brands: a product has its own name, backed by the parent's ("X, from Y"). It can reach a different audience while keeping some trust.
• Separate brands: each product stands alone and customers may not know who owns it. Unilever, for example, sells many brands under their own names. It costs more to build each brand, but a problem in one rarely spreads.

The product portfolio is the full set of products or services an organisation offers, and how they work together. Give each item a role:

• Core earners: the steady products that bring in most of the money.
• Growth products: newer lines the organisation is investing in.
• Seasonal products: offers for a time of year, such as Christmas.
• Gateway products: a low-risk first purchase, such as a sample or trial, that leads to bigger ones.

Roles help you decide where marketing money and attention go, and spot a portfolio leaning too hard on one product.

Stretch or strain. A new product can stretch a brand into new customers, as Greggs' vegan sausage roll did in Lesson 4.1. It can also strain it, if the new product contradicts what the brand stands for. Ask two questions of any new product: does it fit the master brand's promise, and could a failure here damage the rest?

You don't need inside information for this task. A website's menus, a price list and an "about us" page usually show the architecture and most of the portfolio. Where you're guessing a product's role, say so.