MODULE 7

• Convenience Products - products that consumers can purchase easily, quickly, and without a lot of thoughtful decision-making.
• Shopping Products - require more thought from the consumer. Consumers may research and shop around for shopping products, seeking the best quality or price.
• Specialty Products - have unique qualities that consumers will make an extra effort to seek out.
• Unsought Products - consumer goods that a buyer doesn’t anticipate purchasing.
• 4 Classifications of Consumer Products

  1. Convenience Products
  2. Shopping Products
  3. Specialty Products
  4. Unsought Products
• Raw materials are the products that a business needs to purchase in order to make a consumer good, such as flour, sugar, and yeast in our doughnut example.
• Manufactured materials and parts are products used to create the product.
• Capital items are assets that are valuable to the business and have tangible value.
• Supplies and services are goods and services that are typically disposed of and do not contain a tangible value.
• 3 Levels of Product

  1. Core Product
  2. Actual Product
  3. Augmented Product
• The actual product includes the product features, brand, level of quality, packaging, and design.
• The third level of a product is the augmented product: warranties, customer service, product support, etc. The augmented product is the unseen aspects of the product essential to its service to you.
• The core product is what your customer is actually buying.
• Product Item - a particular good that a company sells.
• Product Line - is a set of products that are similar or complementary.
• Product Mix - contains all the products that a company sells.
• Product line depth - refers to the number of products in the line.
• Product mix width - refers to the number of product lines a brand carries.
• A product line filling strategy involves adding new products to an existing product line to expand market coverage and meet customer needs.
• Product line stretching is a strategy in which a company expands its product line either upwards or downwards by adding products that are either higher-end or lower-end compared to the existing products in the line.
• Stretching Downward - A brand introduces a product line that is

  less expensive than its current offering. This may open a new target

  market or change a brand’s positioning in a competitive market
• Stretching Upward - A brand introduces a product line that is more

  expensive than its current offering.
• Stretching Up and Down - A brand can stretch up and down simultaneously.