Marketing week 5 - products (goods and services)

products

can be physical goods, services, or experiences.

is what a business provides to satisfy customer needs

composed of core and supplementary features

importance of getting the core product right

if the core product is not good enough, changing the marketing mix will not make it good.

if the core product is good, but other parts of the product package aren’t, then it will let the product down.

most products we buy are a mix

most physical products nowadays come with services (intangible).

e.g., car rentals (tangible) + car insurance (intangible)

product vs brand

product is what your band offers, while the brand exists out in the market place.

does name of brand matter

no. many brands were not well researched, rather named after someone or something. however, you must follow a criteria to aid its marketability.

how to name your brand

consider:

• descriptive of benefits

• short and memorable

• able to be registered

• suggest authority and trust

• easy to pronounce, read, and spell

• translatable

a brand’s distinctive assets

along with brand name, distinctive assets also identify the brand.

• colours

• logo

• labels and packaging

• taglines

• symbols or characters

• celebrities

• advertising styles

• jingles

if you educate people that your distinctive asset belongs to your brand, your company will be at advantage as it allows it to be noticed in buying situations.

role of labels and packaging

labels identify and promote the brand. packaging protect and promote.

product categories

consumer - buy and use themselves - B2C

industrial - buy and use themselves or use to produce products - B2B

combined - start in one area and move to the other.

new products - three types

continuous innovations - small changes to existing products

discontinuous innovations - new technology in an existing product, but does not require learning new behaviour.

dynamically continuous innovations - significant changes in a product that require consumer learning.

how brands get new products

• develop their own

• copy

• license

• buy a patent

• buy a company

product category life cycle aka PLC

The product category life cycle, or PLC, refers to the stages a product category goes through from introduction to growth, maturity, and decline. This cycle helps marketers understand how to manage product categories over time.

characteristics of services

• intangible - cannot be seen, sampled or tested before purchase

• perishable - a service like booking a flight is perishable.

• inseparable - production and consumption take place simultaneously.

• heterogenous - people aka service providers are variable in their performance

key dimensions of quality service delivery

reliability—performing the promised service properly

• assurance—competence, courtesy, credibility and security

• tangibles—physical appearance • empathy—communication and understanding the customer

• responsiveness—timely service

• recovery—the ability of an organisation to rectify aspects of their services (and products) that have caused dissatisfaction to customers.