Product Management & Marketing Fundamentals

Understanding the Product

A Product is anything that can be offered to satisfy a need or want.

A Product Manager understands the product and defines its best strategy.

Defining Product Strategy involves assessing external and internal performance, competitive situation, and the product's position within the overall product portfolio.

Product Attractiveness Factors include price-value, features, quality, and service mix.

Product Levels

Products can be understood at five distinct levels:

• Core Benefit: The fundamental benefit or service the customer is truly buying.
• Basic Product: The actual product features, design, quality, and packaging.
• Expected Product: The set of attributes and conditions buyers normally expect when they purchase this product.
• Augmented Product: Benefits that exceed customer expectations, such as installation, after-sales service, or warranty.
• Potential Product: All possible augmentations and transformations the product might undergo in the future.

Product Life Cycle (PLC)

A company’s positioning and differentiation strategy must evolve as the product, market, and competitors change over the product life cycle. It's important to note:

• Not all products go through all PLC stages.
• Each product has a specific PLC length.
• Each stage of a product's PLC has a specific length.
• The PLC is a dynamic concept that may change quickly.

Common PLC stages include: Design, Introduction, Growth, Maturity, Decline, Re-introduction, and Hyper-maturity.

Product Attributes

Product attributes can be categorized into physical, functional, and psychological aspects.

Physical Attributes

These are part of the intrinsic nature of the product, often difficult to change, including its composition and organoleptic qualities (e.g., taste, smell, texture).

Functional Attributes

These are not part of the intrinsic nature but contribute to the product's utility and appeal, such as color, product line, product mix, packaging (pack, label, size).

Product Mix

The Product Mix (or product assortment) refers to the set of all product lines and items that a particular seller offers for sale. It is characterized by:

• Width: The number of different product lines the company carries.
• Length: The total number of items within its product lines.
• Depth: The number of versions offered of each product in the line.
• Consistency: How closely related the various product lines are in end use, production requirements, distribution channels, or some other way.

Product Line

A Product Line is a group of closely related products that function in a similar manner, are sold to the same customer groups, are marketed through the same types of outlets, or fall within given price ranges. Strategies include: extension, completing the line, or streamlining the range.

Psychological Attributes

These aspects are purely marketing-driven and incorporated by the marketing team. They depend on how they are perceived by the consumer, including Quality and Brand.

Brand Characteristics

A strong Brand should be:

• Memorable
• Meaningful
• Likable
• Transferable
• Adaptable
• Protectable

Types of Organizations by Innovation

• Innovative Organization: Introduces new products for both the company and the market.
• Imitative Organization: Introduces new products for the company (but not necessarily new to the market).
• Exporting Organization: Introduces products new to a specific market (but not necessarily new to the company).

Competitive Positioning Concepts

• Points of Difference (PODs): Aspects that are relatively distinct from competitors.
• Points of Parity (POPs): Aspects that are largely similar to those of competitors.

Perceptual/Positioning Mapping

A marketing tool that illustrates the image of a brand for customers and how competitors are perceived. It enables marketers to plot their offering's positioning against competitors, reflecting customer perception. Used to define product and marketing mix strategies to achieve ideal positioning.

Meaningful Differentiation

Characteristics that make a product stand out should be: relevant, credible, unique, tangible, feasible, and sustainable.

New Product Concepts

A product is considered "new" if it uses a different brand name, involves significant modifications, and is perceived differently by the customer. Reasons for new products include:

• Risk diversification
• Widening target groups
• Offering a complete range of products
• Optimizing productivity

Product Strategy

Key product strategies include:

• Launching new products
• Stretching the product range (down-market stretch, up-market stretch, or two-way stretch)
• Maintaining no modifications
• Product divestment/discontinuation (removing less profitable products to invest in more profitable ones)
• Finding new uses for current products
• Making modifications to current products

Digital Environment Influence on Products

The digital environment provides significant opportunities for greater customer value, customization, and new products. This includes:

• Developing new products and services better adapted to customer needs and wishes.
• Offering complementary services that increase product value.
• Incorporating value through "mass customization."
• Facilitating co-creation of value by involving customers in new product development.

Online Brand Strategy

Approaches for online brand strategy include:

• Multi-environmental brand strategy
• Creating a variant for the digital brand
• Launching a new digital brand
• Forming alliances with existing digital brands

Sustained Competitive Advantage

The act of occupying a distinctive place in the minds and image of the target market. This is achieved through a company's strategy and consumer perceptions.