Product, Services, and Branding Strategy

1. Product, Services, and Branding Strategy Chapter 7

2. What is a Product? • Anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption and that might satisfy a want or need. • Includes: physical objects, services, events, persons, places, organizations, ideas, or some combination thereof.

3. What is a Service? • A form of product that consists of activities, benefits, or satisfactions offered for sale that are essentially intangible and do not result in the ownership of anything. • Examples: banking, hotel, airline, retail, tax preparation, home repairs.

4. Levels of a Product • Augmented product • Actual product • Core product

5. Consumer Products • Products and services bought by final consumers for personal consumption.

6. Convenience Products • Purchased frequently & immediately • Low priced • Mass advertising • Many purchase locations • Examples: candy, soda, newspapers

7. Shopping Products • Bought less frequently • Higher price • Fewer purchase locations • Comparison shop • Examples: furniture, clothing, cars, appliances

8. Specialty Products • Special purchase efforts • High price relative to logical substitutes • Unique characteristics • Brand identification • Few purchase locations • Examples: Lamborghini, Rolex Watch

9. Unsought Products • New innovations • Products consumers do not want to think about • Require much advertising and personal selling • Examples: life insurance, cemetery plots, blood donation

10. Industrial Products • Those purchased for further processing or for use in conducting business.

11. Industrial Products • Materials and Parts: • Raw materials, manufactured materials and parts • Capital Items: • Products that aid in buyer’s production or operations • Supplies and Services: • Operating supplies, repair, and maintenance items

12. Other Market Offerings • Organizations: Profit (businesses) and nonprofit (schools and churches). • Persons: Politicians, entertainers, sports figures, doctors, and lawyers. • Places: create, maintain, or change attitudes or behavior toward particular places (e.g., tourism). • Ideas (social marketing): Public health campaigns, environmental campaigns, family planning, or human rights.

13. Individual Product Decisions • Product attributes • Branding • Packaging • Labeling • Product support services

14. Product and Service Attributes • Quality • Features • Style & Design

15. Branding • Creating, maintaining, protecting, and enhancing products and services. • A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination of these, that identifies the maker or seller of a product or service. • Article

16. Branding • Advantages to buyers: • Product identification • Product quality • Advantages to sellers: • Basis for product’s quality story • Provides legal protection • Helps to segment markets

17. Packaging • Designing and producing the container or wrapper for a product. • Developing a good package: • Packaging concept • Package elements • Product safety • Environmental concerns

18. Labeling • Printed information appearing on or with the package. • Performs several functions: • Identifies product or brand • Describes several things about the product • Promotes the product through attractive graphics

19. Product Support Services • Assess the value of current services and obtain ideas for new services. • Assess the cost of providing the services. • Put together a package of services that delights the customers and yields profits for the company.

20. Product Line Decisions • Product Line Length • Stretching • Downward • Upward • Both directions • Filling

21. Product Mix Decisions • Product Mix: all of the product lines and items that a particular seller offers for sale. • Width: the number of different product lines the company carries. • Depth: the number of versions offered of each product in the line. • Consistency: how closely related the various lines are.

22. Brand Equity • The positive differential effect that knowing the brand name has on customer response to the product or service. • Provides: • More brand awareness and loyalty • Basis for strong, profitable customer relationships

23. Major Brand Strategy Decisions • Brand positioning • Brand name selections • Brand sponsorship • Brand development

24. Brand Positioning • Can position brands at any of three levels: • Product attributes • Product benefits • Beliefs and values

25. Brand Name Selection • Desirable qualities for a brand name include: • It should suggest product’s benefits and qualities • It should be easy to pronounce, recognize, and remember • It should be distinctive • It should be extendable • It should translate easily into foreign languages • It should be capable of registration and legal protection

26. Brand Sponsorship • Manufacturer’s brands • Private brands • Licensed brands • Co-branding

27. Brand Development • Line Extension: introduction of additional items in a given product category under the same brand name (e.g., new flavors, forms, colors, ingredients, or package sizes). • Brand Extension: using a successful brand name to launch a new or modified product in a new category.

28. Brand Development • Multibranding: offers a way to establish different features and appeal to different buying motives. • New Brands: developed based on belief that the power of its existing brand is waning and a new brand name is needed. Also used for products in new product category.

29. Nature and Characteristics of a Service • Intangibility • Inseparability • Variability • Perishability

30. Major Service Marketing Tasks • Managing Service Differentiation: • Develop a differentiated offer, delivery, and image. • Managing Service Quality: • Be customer obsessed, set high service quality standards, have good service recovery, empower front-line employees. • Managing Service Productivity: • Train current employees or hire new ones, increase quantity & sacrifice quality, harness technology.

31. International Product and Services Marketing • Decide which products and services to introduce • Decide how much to standardize or adapt • Packaging presents new challenges • Services marketers face special challenges • Trend toward global service companies will continue