Foundation of Marketing

(2022-2023)
Course Code: MKT121

Dr. Mayar Farrag

[email protected]

Dr. Perihan Salah

[email protected]

Group TA Email
Group (A) Muhammad Alaa [email protected]
Group (B) Nourhan Ali [email protected]
Group (C) Nada El-Mahdy [email protected]

1
 Chapter 8

Products, Services, and Brands: Building Customer Value

Chapter overview
In this and the next chapter, we look at how companies develop and manage products and
brands. The product is usually the first and most basic marketing consideration.

This chapter begins with a deceptively simple question: What is a product? After addressing this
question, we look at ways to classify products in consumer and business markets.

Then we discuss the important decisions that marketers make regarding individual products,
product lines, and product mixes.

Next, we look into the critically important issue of how marketers build and manage brands.

Finally, we examine the characteristics and marketing requirements of a special form of

product—services.

Chapter outline

WHAT IS A PRODUCT?

P. 248 A product is anything that can be offered to a market for Chapter Objective 1
attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that might satisfy
PPT 8-3 a want or need. P. 248
Key Terms:
Broadly defined, “products” also include services, events, Product, Service
persons, places, organizations, ideas, or mixes of these.

Services are a form of product that consists of activities,

benefits, or satisfactions offered for sale that are essentially
intangible and do not result in the ownership of anything. P. 249
Photos: Umpqua
P. 248 Products, Services, and Experiences Bank, Blackberry

A company’s market offering often includes both tangible

goods and services.

PPT 8-4 At one extreme, the offer may consist of a pure tangible
good, such as soap or toothpaste.

2
At the other extreme are pure services, for which the offer P. 250
consists primarily of a service. Figure 8.1: Three
Levels of Products
To differentiate their offers, marketers are creating and
managing customer experiences with their brands or
company.

Levels of Product and Services

Product planners need to think about products and services

on three levels.

1. Core customer value, which addresses the question

What is the buyer really buying?
2. Actual product.
3. Augmented product, which is created around the core
benefit and actual product by offering additional
consumer services and benefits.

When developing products, marketers first must identify the

core customer value that consumers seeks from the product.
They must then design the actual product and find ways to
augment it in order to create this customer value and the
most satisfying customer experience.

Product and Service Classifications

There are two main classifications of products: consumer

products and industrial products.

Consumer Products
Consumer products are products and services bought by
final consumers for personal consumption.
P. 250
Consumer products include (see Table 8.1): Key Terms:
Consumer Product,
• Convenience products are consumer products and Convenience
services that customers usually buy frequently, Product, Shopping
immediately, and with a minimum of comparison and Product, Specialty
buying effort. Product, Unsought
• Shopping products are less frequently purchased Product
consumer products and services that customers
compare carefully on suitability, quality, price, and
style. P. 251

3
 • Specialty products are consumer products and Table 8.1:
services with unique characteristics or brand Marketing
identification for which a significant group of buyers Considerations for
is willing to make a special purchase effort. Consumer Products
• Unsought products are consumer products that the
consumer either does not know about or knows about
but does not normally think of buying.

Product and service decisions

Individual Product and Service Decisions

Product and Service Attributes

Developing a product or service involves defining the

benefits that it will offer. These benefits are communicated
and delivered by product attributes such as quality, features,
and style and design.

Product Quality is creating customer value and satisfaction.

Total quality management (TQM) is an approach in which
all the company’s people are involved in constantly
improving the quality of products, services, and business
processes.

Product quality has two dimensions: level and consistency.

The quality level means performance quality or the ability of

a product to perform its functions. Quality conformance
means quality consistency, freedom from defects, and
consistency in delivering a targeted level of performance.

Product Features are a competitive tool for differentiating

the company’s product from competitors’ products.

The company should periodically survey buyers who have

used the product and ask these questions: How do you like
the product? Which specific features of the product do you
like most? Which features could we add to improve the
product?

4
Product Style and Design is another way to add customer
value.

Style describes the appearance of a product.

Design contributes to a product’s usefulness as well as to its
looks.

Branding

A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a

combination of these, that identifies the maker or seller of a
product or service.

Branding helps buyers in many ways.

• Brand names help consumers identify products that

might benefit them.
• Brands say something about product quality and
consistency.

Branding gives the seller several advantages.

• The brand name becomes the basis on which a whole

story can be built about a product.
• The brand name and trademark provide legal protection
for unique product features.
• The brand name helps the seller to segment markets.

Packaging
Packaging involves designing and producing the container
or wrapper for a product.

Labeling

Labels perform several functions.

• The label identifies the product or brand.

• The label describes several things about the product.
• The label promotes the brand.

Labeling also raises concerns. As a result, several federal and

state laws regulate labeling.

5
The most prominent is the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act
of 1966.

Labeling has been affected in recent times by:

• Unit pricing (stating the price per unit of standard

measure),
• Open dating (stating the expected shelf life of the
product), and
• Nutritional labeling (stating the nutritional values in the
product).

Product Support Services

The first step is to survey customers periodically to assess

the value of current services and to obtain ideas for new
ones.

Next, the company can take steps to fix problems and add
new services that will both delight customers and yield
profits to the company.