STRATEGY
SUMMARY
::: Product Characteristics and Classifications
Product Levels: The Customer Value Hierarchy
The marketer needs to address five product levels. Each level adds more customer value, and five constitute a Customer value hierarchy.
Core benefit: It is the fundamental level. It is the benefit the customer is really buying.
Basic product: The marketer has to turn the core benefit in to the basic product.
Expected product: A set of attributes and conditions buyers normally expect when they purchase this product.
Augmented product: The product that exceeds customer expectations.
Potential product: It encompasses all the possible augmentations and transformations the product or offering might undergo in the future.
Product Classifications:
Durability and Tangibility
1. Nondurable goods
2. Durable goods
3. Services
Consumer-Goods classification
1. Convenience goods: staple goods, impulse goods, emergency goods.
2. Shopping goods: homogeneous shopping goods, heterogeneous shopping goods.
3. Specialty goods
4. Unsought goods
Industrial-Goods Classification
1. Material and Parts: Raw material products include farm products and natural products, manufactured materials and parts include component materials and component parts.
2. Capital items: installations and equipments.
3. Supplies and Business services: Supplies include maintenance and repair items and operating supplies. Business services include maintenance and repair services and business advisor services.
::: Differentiation
to be branded, products must be differentiated.
Product Differentiation:
Form: The size, shape, or physical structure of a product.
Features: Most products can be offered with varying features that supplement its basic function.
Performance Quality: It is the level at which product’s primary characteristics operates.
Conformance Quality: It is the degree to which all the produced units are identical and meet the promised specifications.