How is positioning related to product management?
Many products are essentially the same thing. There may be hundreds of different detergents. However, all the detergents essentially do the same thing. They clean the clothes. Still all the detergents are sold telling the consumer many different things. Detergents are sold telling the consumer that their clothes will be whiter if the use this detergent. Some detergents are sold telling the consumer that the color of the clothes will be retained or that the clothes will have a fresh smell etc. This is basically product management for positioning.
As discussed, in positioning the marketer tries to occupy a place in the mind of the consumer. Once the marketer decides the place he wishes to occupy, he has to change his product to reflect the position he has chosen.
To get a complete idea consider this, suppose that there is a store selling pizza. However, the store is not doing that well in comparison to the pizza selling giants. So the store identifies who its target market is.
It sees that maybe it’s target market might find it convenient to have the pizza home delivered quickly. So it decides to position itself in the minds of the consumers as the "quick home delivery of pizza" store. Next the store changes its pizza and the packaging, labeling, brand name, price, distribution policy etc. to represent its home delivery of pizza positioning.
Finally it launches an advertising campaign to tell the people about its unique offer and position its self in the minds of the consumers. Sales go up and the store grows. This is more or less the story of how Dominoes came to be.
Note that in the above story how all the aspects of target market, product management, positioning etc. came together.