Marketing exam 2

Product

Need-satisfying offering of a firm

Most customers think about a product in terms of the __ it provides

Total satisfaction

Quality

A product’s ability to satisfy a customer’s needs or requirements

Warranty

Explains what the seller promises about its product

Individual product

A particular product within a product line

Product line

A set of individual products that are closely related

Product assortment

Set of all product lines and individual products that a firm sells

Product line length

Number of individual products in a product line

Service

An intangible offering involving a deed, performance, or effort

True or false: many products are part good and part service

True

True or false: service quality is less consistent than goods quality

True. This is often because it’s hard to separate the service experience from the person who provides it, and the provider of the service could be rude or not be able to effectively deliver their service

Augmented reality

Overlays a computer-generated image, sound, text, or video on a user’s view of the physical world. Pokemon Go is an example of it

Branding

The use of a name, term, symbol, or design, or a combination of these, to identify a product

Brand names connect a product with the__

Benefits a customer can expect

conditions that make a product more favorable to scucessful branding

1. The product is easy to label and identify by brand or trademark 2. The product quality is easy to maintain and the best value for the price 3. Dependable and widespread availability is possible 4. Demand is strong enough that market price can be high enough 5. There are economies of scale 6. Favorable shelf locations or display space in stores help

Brand familiarity

How well customers recognize and accept a company’s brnad

Brand rejection

Potential customers won’t buy a brand unless its image is changed or if there’s no other option

Brand nonrecognition

Final customers don’t recognize a brand at all (i.e. school supplies, inexpensive dinnerware, hardware store items, etc)

Brand recognition

Customers remember the brand and don’t outright reject it, but nothing more than that

Brand preference

Target customers usually choose the brand over other brands

Brand insistence

Customers insist on a firm’s branded product and are willing to search for it

Characteristics of good brand names

Short and simple, easy to spell and read, easy to recognize and remember, easy to pronounce, can only be pronounced in one way, can be pronounced in all languages (for international markets), suggestive of product benefits, adaptable to packaging/labeling needs, no undesirable imagery, always timely (doesn’t go out of date), adaptable to any advertising medium, not in use by another firm

Brand equity

The value of a brand’s overall strength in the market

Lanham Act of 1946

Spells out what kinds of marks (including brand names) can be protected and the exact method of protecting them

True or false: a brand name or trademark can become public property if it falls into common usage for a product category

True (this happened with cellophane, aspirin, shredded wheat, etc)

Family brand

The same brand name for several products, such as keebler snack foods and whirlpool appliances

Licensed brand

A well-known brand that sellers pay a fee to use

Individual brands

Separate brand names for each product

When might a company use individual brands, as opposed to family brands?

When it’s important for the products to each have a separate identity (when products vary in quality or type, etc)

Generic products

Products that have no brand at all other than identification of the contents and manufacturer or intermediary

Manufacturer brands

Brands created by producers

Dealer brands, or private brands

Brands created by intermediaries

Battle of the brands

Competition between dealer brands and manufacturer brands

Advantages of intermediaries in the battle of the brands include:

Can get reliable sources of supply at low cost, can give dealer brands special shelf position and promotion

Why are national brands’ prices higher than dealer brands’ prices

Manufacturers brands need to build brand preference or insistence through heavy promotion and quality ingredients, which both raise costs

Packaging

Involves promoting, protecting, and enhancing the product

Federal fair packaging and labeling act (1966)

Required that consumer goods be clearly labeled in easy-to-understand terms to give customers more information

Consumer products

Products meant for the final consumer

Business products

Products meant for use in producing other products

convenience products

Products a consumer needs but isn’t willing to spend much time or effort shopping for. Bought often, require little service or selling, don’t cost much, and may even be bought by habit. 3 types: staples, impulse products, emergency products

Staples

Products bought often, routinely, and without much thought, such as breakfast cereal

Impulse products

Products that are bought quickly, as unplanned purchases, because of a strongly felt need

Emergency products

Products purchased immediately when the need is great

Shopping products

Products that a customer feels are worth the time and effort to compare with competing products

Homogenous shopping products

Items the customer sees as basically the same and wants at the lowest price

Heterogenous shopping products

Items the customer sees as different and wants to inspect for quality and suitability

Specialty products

Consumer products that the customer really wants and makes a special effort to find. Any branded product that customers insist on by name is a specialty product

Unsought products

Products that potential customers don’t yet want or know they can buy, so they don’t search for them at all

New unsought products

Products offering really new ideas that potential customers don’t know about yet

Regularly unsought products

Products that stay unsought but not unbought forever. An example could be space at a nursing home

Product life cycle

The stages a new-product idea goes through from beginning to end

Characteristics of market introduction

Sales are low; customers aren’t looking for the product; they don’t know about the product; informative promotion is needed; most companies experiences losses during the introduction stage

Characteristics of market growth stage

Industry sales grow fast; industry profits rise and then start falling; innovator begins to make big products but competitors enter; some competitors copy the most successful product or try to approve it and others try to refine their offerings to do a better job of appealing to some target markets; industry profits begin to decline towards the end of this stage; but this is the time of biggest profits for the industry

Characteristics of market maturity stage

Industry sales level off; competition gets tougher; industry profits go down; long-run downward pressure on prices; less efficient firms drop out; new firms can still enter the market but it’s a tough battle; persuasive promotion becomes even more important; price sensitivity is a real factor as products become almost the same in the minds of potential consumers

Characteristics of sales decline stage

New products replace the old; price competition becomes more vigorous; firms with strong brands that have successfully differentiated their products may make profits until the end; some products may keep sales by appealing to most loyal customers or those who are slow to try new ideas

True or false: sales and profits of an individual brand always follow the life-cycle pattern

False; the product life cycle describes the INDUSTRY sales and profits of one PRODUCT IDEA in a particular product-market

True or false: the product life-cycle can last any length of time, from a few years to over 100 years

True

True or false: product life cycles are getting longer

False; product life cycles are getting shorter, due in part to rapidly changing technology

Things that will help a new-product idea move quickly through the early stages of the product life cycle

Having a greater comparative advantage over products already on the market; easy to use; advantages are easy to communicate; can be tried for a limited time with little risk to the customer; it’s compatible with values and experiences of target customers

True or false: pioneers tend to be less profitable over the long run, in part because many do not survive

True

True or false: more often, there is an advantage to being the second-mover

True

True or false: fashion related products tend to have long life cycles

False

“Skimming” the market

Charging a relatively high price to help pay for the introductory costs

True or false: when the early stages of the product life cycle will be fast, a low initial price may make sense to help develop loyal customers early and keep competitors out

True

True or false: at the beginning of the product life cycle, promotion is needed to build demand for the whole idea, not just to sell a specific brand

True

True or false: during the market growth stage, marketing managers want to build brand familiarity; promotion often shifts from informing customers to persuading customers to buy their brand, and brands are forced to price their product competitively

True

True or false: it’s important for a firm to have some competitive advantage as it moves into market maturity

True

True or false: while many firms slash prices in the market maturity stage, creative marketers will find other ways to maintain their margins

True

True or false: it is sometimes better to phase out a product gradually than to end a plan abruptly

True

Continuous innovations

New products that don’t require customers to learn new behaviors

Dynamically continuous innovations

New products that require minor changes in consumer behavior

Discontinuous innovations

New products that require that customers adopting the innovation significantly change their behavior

Product managers/brand managers

Manage specific products, often taking over jobs formerly held by an advertising manager. Their major responsibility is often promotion, although some brand managers start at the new product development stage

Total quality management

The philosophy that everyone in the organization is concerned about quality, throughout all the firm’s activities, to better serve customer needs

True or false: it is less expensive to do something right the first time than it is to pay to do it poorly and then pay again to fix problems

True

Continuous improvement

A commitment to constantly make things better one step at a time; related to tqm

Touchpoints

Points where there is contact between the customer and the company

True or false: there are more touchpoints for goods than services

False; there are more touchpoints for services than for goods

Two keys to improving service quality:

1. Training 2. Empowerment

Empowerment

Giving employees the authority to correct a problem without first checking in with management

Publicity

Any unpaid form of nonpersonal presentation of ideas, goods, or services. Includes earned, owned, and social media

Paid media

Messages generated by a firm and communicated through a message channel the brand pays to access. Utilized by advertising

Owned media

Promotional messages generated by a firm communicated through a message channel the brand directly controls

Earned media

Promotional messages not directly generated by the company or brand, but rather by third parties such as journalists or customers

User-generated content

Any type of communication created by customers for other customers

Benefits of paid media (advertising)

High message control, more precise targeting, potentially large audience

Challenges of paid media (advertising)

Not trusted, customers easily avoid, more costly/declining effectiveness

Benefits of owned media

High message control, relatively low cost, niche audiences, versatile in message content and format

Challenges of owned media

Need to drive or attract customers to sites and create value to ensure their return, require resources to manage and maintain

Benefits of earned media

Most trusted information source, customers most likely to act on this information

Challenges of earned media

Very little message control, can be negative toward brand, difficult to measure, difficult to create, difficult to target

True or false: customers are getting better at avoiding advertising, and thus advertising effectiveness has been declining

True

Search engine optimization (SEO)

The process of designing a website so that it ranks high in a search engine’s unpaid results. Considers how target customers search, what keywords they use in a search, and how the search engine prioritizes its results

Pass-along

When one customer passes information on to one or more other customers

Six STEPPS to increase pass-along

Social currency (when the sharer looks good by sharing), triggers (makes a topic easy to remember and encourages others to talk about it), emotion, public, practical value, stories

Branded services

Valued services a brand provides that are not directly connected to a core product offering

White paper

Authoritative report or guide that addresses important issues in an industry and offers solutions

Landing page

A customized web page that logically follows from clicking on an organic search result, online advertisement or other link. Could be linked from social media, emails, seo, etc

True or false: because customers can easily click away from a web page, a landing page that directly addresses a customer’s needs minimizes click-away

True

Infographic

A visual image such as a chart or diagram used to represent information or data