Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Marketing level of products
Certainly, at the center of marketing is the product, as it is the reason that a business
is in business. Simply, a product (or service) is what the business is offering for sale
to potential customers.
A continual review of the product focuses on whether or not the product is appro-
priate and suitable for the potential consumer in the market that the business is
targeting.
Kotler [
83
] distinguished three components for a potential market segment (i.e., a
set of potential consumers):
•
Need
: a lack of a basic requirement.
•
Want
: a specific requirement for products or services to match a need.
•
Demand
: a set of wants plus the desire and ability to pay for the exchange.
Customers will choose a product based on their perceived value of it. Satisfaction is
the degree to which the actual use of a product matches its perceived value at the time
of purchase. A customer is satisfied only if the actual value is the same or exceeds
the perceived value.
You can assess your product's value via a series of questions. Is your product
or service superior in some significant way to another product available from your
competitors? If so, what is the attribute of superiority? If not, could you develop an
area of superiority for the product? If there is not a superior attribute, should you be
offering this product or service at all in the current marketplace?
Kotler [
83
] defined five levels to a product:
•
Core beneit
- the fundamental need or want that consumers satisfy by consuming
the product or service.
•
Generic product
- a version of the product containing only those attributes or
characteristics absolutely necessary for it to function.
•
Expected product
- the set of attributes or characteristics that buyers normally
expect and agree to when they purchase a product.
•
Augmented
product
- inclusion of additional features, benefits, attributes, or
related services that serve to differentiate the product from its competitors.
•
Potential
product
- all the augmentations and transformations a product might
undergo in the future.
The attributes of a product have a direct bearing on how you craft the ad copy, as an
ad can discuss the feature of a product or the benefits of a product, for example.
Kotler noted that much competition takes place at the Augmented Product level
rather than at the Core Benefit level [
72
], or as Levitt put it: “New competition is
not between what companies produce in their factories, but between what they add
to their factory output in the form of packaging, services, advertising, customer
advice, financing, delivery arrangements, warehousing, and other things that people
value” [
84
].
Kotler's [
83
] model of product attributes provides a tool to assess how the organi-
zation and their customers view their relationship and which aspects create value.
