What Is Product?
Product is anything that can be offered to a market attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that might satisfy a want or need. Products include more than just tangible objects. Broadly defined, products also include service, events, persons, places, organizations, ideas, or a mixture of these.
Because of their importance in the world economy, we give special attention to service. Service are a form of product that consist of activities, benefits, or satisfactions offered for sale that are essentially intangible and do not result in the ownership of anything.
Products, Services, and Experiences
Products are key element in the overall market offering. Marketing mix planning begins with a building an offering that brings value to target costumers. This offering becomes the basis on which the company builds profitable customer relationship.
A company's market offering often includes both tangible goods and
services. At one extreme, the market offer may consist of a pure tangible goods, no offer consists primarily of a service.
Today, as products and services become more commoditized, many companies are moving to a new level in creating value for their costumers. To differentiate their offers, beyond simply making products and delivering services, They are creating and managing customers
experience with their brands or company.
Levels of Product and Services
Product planners need to think about products and services on three levels. Each levels adds more costumer value. The most basic level is the core costumer value, which addresses the question: What is the buyer really buying? When designing products, marketers must first define the core, problem-solving benefits or services that consumers seek.
At the second level, product planners must turn the core benefit into an actual product. They need develop product and service features, a design, a quality level, a brand name, and packaging.
Finally, product planners mus build an augmented product around the cor benefit and actual product by offering additional consumer services and benefits.
Product and Services Classifications
Consumer Products. Consumer Products are products and services bought by final consumers for personal consumption. Marketers usually classify these products and services further based on how consumers go about buying them. Consumer products, and unsought products.
Industrial Products. Industrial Products are those products purchased for further processing or for use in conducting in business. Thus, the distinction between a consumer product and an industrial product is based on the purpose for which the product is purchased.
The three groups of industrial products and services are material and parts, capital items, and supplies and services.
Organizations, Persons, Places, and Ideas. Organizations often carry out activities to "sell" the organization itself. Organization marketing consists of activities undertaken to create, maintain, or change the attitudes and behavior of target consumers toward an organization.
People can also be thought of as products.
Person marketing consists of activities undertaken to create, maintain, or change attitudes or behavior toward particular people.
Place marketing involves activities undertaken to create, maintain, or change attitudes or behavior toward particular places.
Ideas can also be marketed. In one sense, all marketing is the marketing of an idea. Here, however, we narrow our focus to the marketing of social ideas. This area has been called social marketing, defined by the Social Marketing Institute (SMI) as the use of commercial marketing concepts and tools in programs designed to influence individuals' behavior to improve their well-being and that of society.
Product and Service Decisions
Individual Product and Service Decisions
Product and Service Attributes. Developing a product or service involves defining the benefits that it will over. These benefits are communicated and delivered by product attributes such as quality, features, and style and design.
Branding. A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of these, that identifies the maker of seller of a product or service.
Packaging. Packaging involves designing and producing the container or wrapper for a product. Traditionally, the primary function of the package was to hold and protect the product.
Labeling. Labels range from simple tags attached to products to complex graphics that are part of the packaging. They perform several functions. At the very least, the label identifies the product or brand.
Product Support Services. Customer service is another element of product strategy. A company's offer usually includes some support services, which can be a minor part or a major part of the total offering.
Product Line Decisions
A product line is a group of products that are closely related because they functions in a similar manner, are sold to the same customer groups, are marketed through the same types of outlets, or fall within given price ranges.
Product Mix Decisions
A product mix (or product portfolio) consists of all product lines and items that a particular seller offers for sale. A company's product mix has four important dimensions: width, length, depth, and consistency.
Services Marketing
The Nature and Characteristics of a Service
Service intangibility means that services cannot be seen, tasted, felt, heard, or smelled before they are bought.
Service inseparability means that services cannot be separated from their providers, whether the providers are people or machines.
Service variability means that the quality of services depends on who provides them as well as when, where, and how they are provided.
Service perishability means that services cannot be stored for later sale or use.
Marketing Strategies for Service Firms
The Service Profit Chain
Service profit chain is the chain that links service firm profits with employee and customer satisfaction.
Internal marketing means that the service firm must orient and motivate its customer-contact employees and supporting service people to work as a team to provide customer satisfaction.
Interactive marketing means that quality depends heavily on the quality of the buyer-seller interaction during the service encounter.
Service companies face three major marketing tasks: They want to increase their service differentiation, service quality, and service productivity.
Branding Strategy: Building Strong Brands
Brand Equity
Brand equity is the differential effect that knowing the brand name has on customer response to the product and its marketing.
Building Strong Brands
Brand Positioning
Marketers need to position their brands clearly in target customers' minds. They can positioning brands at any of three levels. At the lowest level, they can position the brand on product attributes. A brand can be better positioned by associating its name with a desirable benefit. The strongest brands go beyond attribute or benefit positioning. They are positioned on strong beliefs and values, engaging customers on a deep, emotional level.
Brand Name Selection
Desirable qualities for a brand name include the following:
- It should suggest something about the product's benefits and qualities.
- It should be easy to pronounce, recognize, and remember.
- The brand name should be distinctive.
- It should be extendable.
- The name should translate easily into foreign languages.
- It should be capable of registration and legal protection.
Brand Sponsorship
National Brands versus Store Brands. National brands (or manufacturers' brands) have long dominated the retail scene. In recent times, however, an increasing number of retailers and wholesalers have created their own store brands (or private brands). Store brands have been gaining strength for more than two decades, but recent tighter economic times have created a store-brand boom.
Licensing. Most manufacturers take years and spend millions to create their own brand names. However, some companies license names or symbols previously created by other manufacturers names of well-known celebrities, or character from popular movies and books.
Co-building. Co-building occurs when two established brand names of different companies are used on the same product.
Brand Development
Line Extensions. Line extensions occur when a company extends existing brand names to new forms, color sizes, ingredients, or flavors of an existing product category.
Brand Extensions. A brand extension extends a current brand name to new or modified products in a new category.
Multibrands. Multibranding offers a way to establish different features that appeal to different customer segments, lock up more reseller shelf space, and capture a larger market share.
New Brands. A company might believe that the power of its existing brand name is waning, so a new brand name is needed. Or it may create a new brand name when it enters a new product category for which none of its current brand names are appropriate.
Managing Brands
Companies must manage their brands carefully. First, the brand's positioning must be continuously communicated to consumers. Major brand marketers often spend huge amounts on advertising to create brand awareness and build preference and loyalty.
Such advertising campaigns can help create name recognition, brand knowledge, and perhaps even some brand preference.
The brand's positioning will not take hold fully unless everyone in the company lives the brand.
Finally, companies need to periodically audit their brands' strengths and weaknesses.
