7 Products

The 4Ps of the “marketing mix”

Different ways to articulate or reinforce our positioning

• Products

  • Change quality, design, packaging, sizes, warranties, return policy

  • Job-to-be-done

    • Anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy a want, need, problem

  • Physical goods (durable, non-durable), services, experiences, events, info

• Price

  • Change list price, discounts, repayment period, financing terms

• Promotion

  • Change size of sales force; how, where, and when we advertise

• Place

  • Change where we’re available, number of intermediaries, sales environment

Typical Product Life Cycle (PLC)

• Bell-shaped curve, divided into four stages 

  • Introduction

  • Growth

  • Maturity

  • Decline

• Profits peak before sales 

  • As competition increases, new costs incurred (price promotions, new ads, innovations, greater distribution) 

• Common assumptions

  • Products have a limited life 

  • Product sales pass through stages, each posing different challenges, opportunities, problems

PLC’s 4 Stages

1. Introduction stage

2. Growth stage

3. Maturity stage

4. Decline stage

1. Introduction stage 

• Slow sales growth

• Profits nonexistent 

• Competition is light 

• Trying to gain trial by early adopters 

• Focus on quality control 

• Example: making leather out of pineapple

2. Growth stage

• Rapid market acceptance and profit improvement 

• Competitors enter aggressively 

• Variations needed as segments emerge 

• Competitors may help to bring attention to the category 

• Examples: Oura fitness rings, red light therapy

3. Maturity stage

• Slowdown in sales growth as product is accepted by potential buyers 

• Profits stabilize or decline

• Focus on new product platforms to reintroduce growth

• Examples: Tide (detergent, tide sticks, tide hangers); Apple; Trader Joe’s

4. Decline stage

• Sales and profits decline 

• Focus on profits rather than sales or share 

• Reduce marketing budget

• Examples: Gamestock; CD’s in general–taken over by spotify

PLC’s shortcomings 

• Some life-cycle patterns are too variable to be generalized 

• Stages can be self-fulfilling prophecy 

  • False beliefs —> behaviors that cause the prediction to become true

• Easy to retrospectively assess stages, but hard to know where you are in real-time 

• Need for certain features may fade, but need for benefits conveyed by those features likely to be more stable 

• When the product is conceptualized as a bundle of benefits, may be able to perpetuate the plateau in sales indefinitely

Way to think about how products evolve over time

• Potential: potentially exists 

  • SpaceX human spaceship to mars?

• Augmented: top of the line but not common across all products in the category 

  • where brands can display their POD

• Expected: includes attributes that consumers expect 

  • need to offer PODs to meet this bar

Search attributes

• Products evaluated prior to purchase 

  • price, product appearance, color, brand itself

• Meijer trying to make the case that all spinach is gross to kids (gross = experience attribute), the only differentiation is that theirs is cheaper (price = search attribute), so you’d save money by buying theirs

Experience attributes

• products evaluated after purchase 

  • noisiness, friendliness

• Companies often motivated to make experience attributes more tangible

  • Free samples

Credence attributes

• Products that can never be evaluated — difficult to verify 

  • health benefits of food

• How do companies convince customers their products possess credence attributes? 

  • → Set high prices to signal high quality, ads, etc.

Emotional attachment to products

• Play up emotional attachment to increase sales

  • handwritten fonts

• Getting people to part with products they're emotionally attached to

  • Remind people they can keep the memories

• Products are an essential brand-building tool

  • Only some products are viewed as containing the “essence” of their brand

Interbrand Assessesments

• Use of focus groups

• Criteria for assessing strength of brands

  • Internal clarity: target audience and positioning 

  • Internal commitment to importance of brand 

  • Understanding what makes the brand distinctive 

  • Extent to which brand is experienced consistently across all touchpoints or formats 

  • Extent to which the brand generates positive WOM

Brands serve at least 3 functions

• Simplify search decisions

  • Easily recognizable/distinct logo

  • ‘Ingredient branding’ difficult to evaluate the quality of product components

• Directly enhance value of the product

• Elicit emotions 

Packaging objectives

Sometimes referred to as "the fifth P"

• Identify the brand

• Convey descriptive and persuasive information

• Facilitate product transportation and protection

• Assist at-home storage

• Aid product consumption

Additional Packaging info

• Limited edition packaging

  • scarcity

• Frustration-free packaging

• Can support or not support healthy eating habits

  • portion sizes