Product and Brand Management, including New Product Development
Product concepts
Know the three levels - core benefit, actual product, augmented product - and the classification: convenience, shopping, specialty, unsought; durable versus non-durable; consumer versus industrial. Understand the product mix (width, length, depth, consistency) and the product line decisions (stretching, filling, modernising, featuring).
Product life cycle
Introduction, growth, maturity, decline - each with distinct pricing, promotion and distribution implications. The trap is treating the PLC as deterministic; not all products follow it.
New product development
Sequence: idea generation, screening, concept development and testing, marketing strategy, business analysis, product development, test marketing, commercialisation. Most ideas fail at screening or concept testing. Understand the adoption process (awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, adoption) and adopter categories (innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards).
Brands
Brand equity is the differential value a brand name adds - measured through awareness, associations, perceived quality, loyalty and proprietary assets. Branding decisions: manufacturer versus private label, individual versus family branding, line and brand extensions, co-branding, repositioning.
Traps in questions
- Placing test marketing before business analysis - it comes after.
- Confusing brand extension (new category, same brand) with line extension (same category, new variant).
- Assuming high awareness equals high equity; loyalty and quality perception matter.
- Treating a warranty as a separate service rather than an augmented product element.
Worked example
A dairy brand sells yoghurt and launches a cheese under the same name. Same brand, new category = brand extension. Launching a low-fat version of the existing yoghurt = line extension.
Rule of thumb
NPD order: idea → screen → concept → strategy → business analysis → develop → test → launch. Never test market before the numbers are checked.