INTRODUCTION TO
MARKETING
Products, Services, and Brands:
Building Customer Value
Topics to be covered:
What is Product?
Individual Product and Service Decisions
Product Line and Product Mix Decisions
Services Marketing
What is Product?
Product, Services, and Experiences: Product is the key element in the
overall market offerings. Market offerings may also include services
and experiences.
Product: Anything that can be offered to a market for attention,
acquisition, use, or consumption that might satisfy a want or need.
Service: Any activity or benefit that one party can offer to another that
is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything.
Experiences: Experiences represent what buying the product or service
will do for the customer. To differentiate their offers, beyond simply
making products and delivering services, marketers are creating and
managing customer experiences with their brands or company.
(continued…)
Levels of Product and Services:
Core Customer Value
Actual Product
Augmented Product
(continued…)
Product and Services Classification: Products and services fall into
two broad classes based on the types of consumers that use them—
consumer products and industrial products. Broadly defined,
products also include other marketable entities such as experiences,
organizations, persons, places, and ideas.
(continued…)
Consumer Products: A product bought by final consumers for personal
consumption. Marketers usually classify these products and services further
based on how consumers go about buying them.
Convenience Product: A consumer product that customers usually buy
frequently, immediately, and with a minimum of comparison and buying
effort.
Shopping Product: A consumer product that the customer, in the
process of selection and purchase, usually compares on such bases as
suitability, quality, price, and style.
Specialty Product: A consumer product with unique characteristics or
brand identification for which a significant group of buyers is willing to
make a special purchase effort.
Unsought Product: A consumer product that the consumer either does
not know about or knows about but does not normally think of buying.
(continued…)
Key marketing considerations and examples are shown in the figure given below:
(continued…)
Industrial Products: A product bought by individuals and organizations for
further processing or for use in conducting a business. The three groups of
industrial products are as follows:
(continued…)
Materials and Parts: Materials and parts include raw materials and
manufactured materials and parts.
Raw materials consist of farm products and natural products.
Manufactured materials and parts consist of component materials
and component parts.
Capital Items: Capital items are industrial products that aid in the
buyer’s production or operations, including installations and accessory
equipment.
Suppliers and Services: The final group of industrial products is suppliers
and services.
(continued…)
Organizations, Persons, Places, and Ideas
Individual Product and Service Decisions
The following figure shows the important decisions in the
development and marketing of individual products and services:
Product Quality & TQM A brand is a name, term, Packaging involves Labels range from A company’s offer
Product Features sign, symbol, or design, or designing and producing simple tags attached usually includes some
Product Style & Design a combination of these, the container or wrapper to products to support services, which
that identifies the maker for a product. complex graphics can be a minor or a
or seller of a product or that are part of the major part of the total
service. package. They offering.
perform several
functions.
Product Line and Product Mix Decisions
Product Line Decisions: A product line is a group of products that are
closely related because they function 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.
The major product line decision involves product line length—the
number of items in the product line. The line is too short if the
manager can increase the profit by adding items; the line is too long
if the manager can increase profits by dropping items.
(continued…)
The options in different cases are shown below:
Dropping Items
Expanding the product line
Line Filling
Line Stretching
(continued…)
Product Mix Decisions: A product mix (or product portfolio) consists
of all the product lines and items that a particular seller offers for
sale. A company’s product mix has four important dimensions:
Width
Length
Depth
Consistency
Services Marketing
Nature and Characteristics of a Service: A company must consider
four special service characteristics when designing marketing
programs.
(continued…)
Three Types of Service Marketing: Service marketing requires more
than traditional marketing using Four Ps.
(continued…)
External Marketing: Service marketing requires more than traditional
marketing using Four Ps. In fact, we have seven elements in the service
marketing mix. Therefore, we have Seven Ps instead of Four Ps. The
additional three Ps are as follows:
People
Process
Physical Evidence
Internal Marketing: Orienting and motivating customer-contact employees
and supporting service people to work as a team to provide customer
satisfaction.
Interactive Marketing: Training service employees in the fine art of
interaction with customers to satisfy their needs.
Thank You!
