Product and Promotion Introduction

Product and Promotion Introduction

• Build a better mousetrap is an old adage, but not always true, as Woodstream Corp's "Little Champ" failed.
• Products are successful when they provide value and are a bundle of attributes.
• Attributes include features, functions, benefits, uses, as well as brand and packaging.

Layers of the Product Concept

• A product encompasses everything a customer receives in an exchange.
• Marketers distinguish three layers of a product: core, actual, and augmented.

Product Classification

• Marketers classify products based on how and where consumers shop.
• This classification relates to the effort consumers invest in the purchase decision.

Convenience Products

• Convenience products are typically non-durable goods or services that are bought with minimal effort.
• Examples are Staples, like milk and bread, consumer packaged goods referred to as fast-moving consumer goods, impulse buys, geofencing marketing and for emergency purposes. Consumers expect convenience products to be low-priced and readily available.

Shopping Products

• Shopping products are goods and services where consumers spend time and energy gathering details on price, attributes, and quality.
• Examples of shopping products include computers, smart phones, appliances, and automobiles.
• Consumers assess alternatives before purchasing.

Specialty Products

• Specialty products possess unique characteristics important to buyers at nearly any cost.
• Purchase typically involves extended problem solving requiring considerable effort.
• Marketers must exert considerable effort to distinguish their products.
• Customers can exhibit strong loyalty to brands that satisfy them.

Unsought Products

• Unsought products are those for which consumers have little awareness or interest until a need arises.
• Examples of such include retirement plans, life insurance, and new tires for a car
• They often need advertising or personal selling for interest.

Adoption Pyramid

• Awareness stage occurs when consumers recognize the existence of an innovation, often driven by a media blitz.
• Interest is generated when consumers identify how a product could fulfill a need, prompting them to seek information.
• Evaluation sees consumer weighing costs against benefits, though impulse buys bypass planning or research.
• Trial involves direct experience with the product.
• Adoption sees the purchase after the trial phase.
• Confirmation involves assessing if the actual benefits and costs align with expectations.

Adopter Categories

• Innovators represent 2.5% of adopters, are extremely adventurous risk takers and well educated.
• Early adopters comprise 13.5% of adopters, are concerned about social acceptance, heavy media users, and others solicit their opinion.
• The early majority makes up 34% of adopters, avoids being first or last, are middle class, deliberate, and cautious.
• Late majority consists of 34% adopters, are older, conservative and have a lower than average education and income.
• Laggards account for 16% of adopters, have lower education and income, are bound by tradition.

Factors Affecting Adoption Rate

• The speed of diffusion is affected by how well a new product embodies the following characteristics
• Relative advantage, which refers to is the degree to which a consumer thinks a product offers superior benefits.
• Compatibility considers the extent to which an innovation aligns with cultural values, customs, practices, and norms.
• Complexity is the degree to which a new product seems difficult to grasp and use.
• Trialability entails the ability to sample a new product and its benefits.
• Observability refers to the degree to which others can see the new product and the benefits it provides.

Product Planning

• Product lines are designed to meet a single need or desire of a specific customer group.
• Product line length refers to stock keeping units
• Product line strategies encompass full-line versus limited-line approaches. Also upward, downward or two-way line stretch. Also filling or contracting a product line
• Cannibalization happens when a new product decreases sales of an existing one.

Product Mix Strategies

• The product mix is the total products a firm sells.
• Assessing the width of product mix is important
• Product lines in product mix generally have common characteristics.

Product Quality

• Product quality is the capacity that a product has to satisfy consumer expectation.
• Total Quality Management (TQM) helps companies achieve objectives.
• TQM means dedicating the entire corporation to developing and enhancing all areas of the company.

Product Life Cycle (PLC)

• The product life cycle describes how market response & marketing activities change during a product's life.
• New products from well-known brands possess an advantage.
• Many products do no progress out of the introduction stage due to little awareness of product, 95% fail. Thus, efficient advertising & promotion are crucial.
• Some, such as Coca-Cola, stay at the top for over 120 years.
• During the PLC Growth stage the product becomes accepted and sales rapidly increase.
• In the Maturity stage sales hits their peak whilst the margins become narrow and is the longest.
• Decline stage is reached which leads to reduce sales because of customer demand changes. Thus, the firm may decide to drop the product, try and reposition the product or decrease help and ensure output stay profitable.

Brand Names

• A brand is anything, a term name or symbol is any unique part of the output.
• Good brand names maintain relationships with clients, display an image and is easy to understand.

Branding Techniques.

• Family brand strategy exists where items can share the same brand name
• Store brands are marketed by the distribution chain under it's own label.
• Private brands are manufactured by national manufacturers who still manufacture product.
• Generic brands means there isn't a brand name and packaged with plain packaging with the output on it and have the lowest prices.
• Licensing lets one company sell to another the rights to use a protected trademark.
• Movie producers license their properties, often to multiple firms to produce multiple products, examples Star Wars, Disney films, Disney films or Terminator action films.
• Cobranding consists of two brands working together on an output.
• Ingredient branding relates branded materials becoming "component parts" of other branded products.
• Packaging serves both functional and communication purposes to protect from spoilage and communicate about the output.

Promotion and Advertising

• Marketing messages can take many shapes w/ a wide range of aspirations.
• Every aspect of marketing mix has a form of communication
• All efforts in marketing communication looks to either inform, remind, encourage or creates relations.
• Integrated marketing communication (IMC) refers to planning, performing assessments of campaigns across time directed towards audiences.
• IMC hopes to deliver consistent branding on different platforms
• IMC use multi-platform strategy which mixes social platform use with other marketing communication.

Communication Methods

• Communication models can be separated into one-to-many (advertising, PR), one-to-one (Personal sales) or many-to-many(social media).
• Marketers engage with personal sales which relates to direct communications usually done on a more personal level.
• Messages try reaching masses to increase the audience
• Business must monitor all stakeholders to identify target sector.
• Communications occur when consumers engage with product.
• Creating relationships from consumers occurs after delivering a series of messages known as the hierarchy of effects
• When communications objectives are determined budgets must be established and allocated.
• Promotion design has communication techniques used for the design itself

Evaluating Communication and Advertising

• Tracking and assessing the campaign ensures it has been a successful.
• Advertising relates to communication from specific sponsor often via mass media.
• Promotion can be measured based on different mediums, all are measured to sales.
• Digital platforms let companies advertise via means of website and email to spread brand awareness.
• Owned media means website, social media and blogs whereas paid media means advertising through outside source.
• Key forms of direct marketing: Direct communication to a customer is designed to generate a response in forms such as mail order and Telemarketing.
• Mail lists are collections of outputs used in book form
• Direct communication has advantage over catalog due to being able to personalize the output.
• FTC established 'National Do Not Call regisry" in an attempt to limit telemarketing calls .
• M-Commerce refers to advertisement through cellphones through text format and messages.
• Buzz marketing refers to brand ambassadors or influential people who consumers may know.
• All the following occur through Sales promotions, Advertisements and public relations which are all ways firms aim for to generate short term incentives.
• Direct marketing are designed to influence customers.
• Trade sales promotion means a business hopes to increase sales for output and services.

Public Relations

• Public relations relates to communications that look to promote good associations between entities.
• PR now have to factor in the views of consumers, regulations and investors, which can mean a crisis needing managing