Marketing Brand Essentials Quiz

Chapter 8: Products, Services, and Brands: Building Customer Value

• Products are anything offered in a market for attention, use, or consumption that might satisfy needs or wants
• Services are activities, benefits, or satisfactions that are essentially intangible and don't result in ownership
• Products and services are becoming more commoditized, so companies create and manage customer experiences with their brands or company.
• Examples of creating experiences include Airbnb's "Night At" program transforming locations into unforgettable experiences. This includes underwater sleeping experiences to sleepovers at castles for Halloween.
• Products have three levels:
  • Augmented product: Delivery and credit, brand, name, core customer value (quality level, product support), after-sale service, features, design, packaging, warranty
  • Actual product: Core customer value, quality level, product features, design, packaging, and warranty
• Companies make decisions regarding individual products and services, product lines, and product mixes. These decisions involve product attributes, branding, packaging, and product support services.
• Product quality is the characteristics that bear on its ability to satisfy needs
• Quality is assessed based on three categories: total quality management, return-on quality, and quality and performance levels and conformance quality.
• Product features are a competitive tool to differentiate a product
• Style is the appearance and design contributes to a product's usefulness and looks
• Brand is the name, term, logo, symbol, design (combination), that identifies a product.
• Brand equity is the differential effect from knowing the brand name, while brand value is the total financial value of a brand
• Consumers' relationships with brands can impact experiences through photo sharing services.
• Consumers have strong emotional connections with established brands, as seen with customers' love for Disneyland.

Product and Service Classifications

• Consumer products: Bought for personal use
  • Convenience products: Frequently bought, little planning, low comparison (e.g., newspapers, candy, fast food)
  • Shopping products: Less frequent purchases, careful comparisons (e.g., furniture, cars, appliances)
  • Specialty products: Unique characteristics, significant purchase effort (e.g., medical services, designer clothes, high-end electronics)
  • Unsought products: Unknown or not normally considered for purchase (e.g., life insurance, funeral services, blood donations)
• Industrial products: Bought for further processing or use in conducting a business
  • Materials & parts: Raw or manufactured materials and parts
  • Capital items: Aid in the buyer's production or operations
  • Supplies & services: Operating supplies, repair items, business services

Product Line Decisions

• Product line: Group of closely related products in terms of function, customer groups, marketing channels or price ranges
• Product line length: Number of items in a product line (line stretching, line filling)
• Product mix: All product lines offered by a seller (width, length, depth, consistency)

Services Marketing

• Four characteristics of services: Intangibility, inseparability, variability, perishability
• Types of service industries include Government, Privately run non-profit, Business
• Marketing strategies for service firms include additional strategies like service-profit chain, internal marketing, interactive marketing, and managing service differentiation, managing service quality,,managing service productivity

Branding Strategy

• Brand equity: The differential effect from knowing the brand name
• Brand value: The total financial worth of a brand
• Brand positioning: To place a brand in the minds of consumers
• Brand name selection: Should support the brand and marketing strategies, and be easy to pronounce
• Brand sponsorship: Manufacturer/Private/Licensed/Co-branding
• Brand development: Line/Brand/Multibrand/New brands