Product: Classification, Levels, Branding, Packaging and Product Life Cycle
Product decisions cover classification, levels, branding, packaging and the product life cycle (PLC). Expect questions that ask you to place a product in a class, identify the augmented product or recommend PLC strategies.
Core rules
- Consumer products: convenience (soap, matchbox), shopping (furniture, clothes), specialty (designer watch) and unsought (insurance, blood donation). Industrial products include raw materials, fabricating materials, capital items, supplies and services.
- Three levels: core benefit (what the buyer really buys), actual product (design, quality, brand, pack) and augmented product (warranty, delivery, installation, after-sales).
- Branding gives identity and legal protection; brand equity is the extra value from the name. Packaging protects, informs, enables convenience and promotes; labels carry mandatory information under legal metrology and food rules.
- PLC: introduction, growth, maturity and decline. Strategies change from building awareness to defending share to harvesting.
Worked example
A company launches a smartphone at Rs 18,000 with a 5,000 mAh battery, one-year warranty and free screen replacement for six months. Reasoning: reliable battery is the core benefit for commuters; the phone, camera and brand form the actual product; warranty and replacement are augmented. In introduction, the firm spends on advertising and selective distribution; in maturity it adds exchange offers and wider retail. Calling the warranty the core product would be wrong.
Traps
Do not confuse product class with PLC stage. Do not treat packaging as only protection; it also carries legal information and promotion. Do not say every product passes through all PLC stages at the same speed.