Understanding Product Design and Brand Strategy
Product Design:
Product, Brand, Packaging, and Services.
What is a Product? It is all that is offered to the attention of a market for purchase, use, or consumption and that can satisfy a need or desire.
- Commodity: It occupies the center of the total product and defines the core benefits that your product will offer consumers.
- Real Goods: You can have up to five characteristics: a degree of quality, characteristics, design, brand name, and packaging.
- Increased Product: You must give consumers a little more than usual; for example, a warranty, free lessons to use the product, repair services if necessary, and a phone number in case you have questions or problems.
Product Rating
- Durables, Nondurables, and Services.
- Consumer Goods: These are the final goods purchased by consumers for personal consumption.
- Common-Use Goods: These are services and consumer goods that the customer buys frequently, immediately, and with minimal effort.
- Comparison Goods: These are consumer goods that the customer often compares based on convenience, quality, price, and style.
- Specialized Goods: Goods with unique characteristics or brands that identify them, for which a significant group of buyers is willing to make a special effort to purchase.
- Unwanted Goods: These are consumer goods that consumers do not know about or, if they do, usually do not plan to buy.
- Industrial Estate:
- Materials and Parts: These are assets fully inserted into the manufacturer’s product.
- Capital Goods: These are partially included in the finished product.
- Supplies and Services: These do not fall into the finished product at all.
Decisions About a Single Product
Decisions regarding the attributes of the product.
- Product Quality: This refers to the product’s ability to perform its functions, and quality has two dimensions.
- Quality Grade: This holds the position of the product in the market to which it is addressed.
- Consistency of Quality: This refers to the “absence of defects or variations.”
- Product Characteristics: These are competitive tools to identify the product of the company from competing products.
- Product Design:
- Style: This describes the appearance of the product.
- Design: This contributes to the product’s usefulness.
Decisions as a Brand
Consumers think the brand is an important part of the product and can add value. An example is the perfume White Line, which consumers perceive as high quality and expensive. However, if you change the same perfume bottle but keep the same fragrance, it may not have the same perceived value.
Some manufacturers find it easier and less expensive to make the product, while others focus on the brand.
Over time, they realized that those who manage the brand control the market; brands can change suppliers from Taiwan to Malaysia if costs are lower.
What is a Brand?
A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or a combination thereof, which seeks to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers.
A brand, as opposed to a patent or copyright, is used for an unlimited time and has no expiration date.
A brand can offer up to four degrees of significance:
- Attributes
- Benefits
- Values
- Personality
Brand Value
Brands vary in power and value in the market; strong brand equity is associated with a well-known brand name and quality.
It is difficult to measure brand equity because companies usually do not register it in their financial statements, yet they pay handsomely for it.
Some analysts believe that brands are more durable assets, lasting longer than specific products and facilities.
To Brand or Not to Brand
Today, brands have become so strong that there is almost nothing that lacks one.
Towards the end of the 70s, generic products emerged as a surprise to manufacturers with brand names.
Generic products are simpler and less expensive versions of common products, such as paper towels and cat food.
Despite the popularity of generic products, the debate about branding continues. This situation highlights key questions: Why have a brand? Who benefits? How do they benefit? At what cost? Brands help buyers in many ways.
Sponsorship of the Brand
A manufacturer has three options for product sponsorship: it can be launched as a brand (or national brand), for example, when Kellogg or IBM sells its products under its own brand name. Alternatively, the manufacturer can sell its product to retailers who put a private label on it.
Brands have long dominated the retail scene. Most manufacturers take years and spend millions to create their brand names. However, some firms grant licenses to use the names or symbols.
The New Brand Strategy – A company can create a new product name when entering a new product category for which none of the existing brand names are appropriate. This is also called the strategy of many brands.
The Brand Extension – This represents an effort to use a successful name to launch new or modified products within a category.
Line Extensions – This means that a company introduces more items within a given category of products with the same brand name, such as other flavors, shapes, colors, ingredients, or package sizes.
The Repositioning of the Brand – Regardless of whether a brand is well positioned in a market, the company may need to reposition it later. A competitor may launch a brand that positions itself against the company’s brand, capturing much of the market.
The Choice of Brand Name – The brand name should be chosen carefully. A successful name can greatly influence the success of a product. Desirable qualities for a brand name include:
- It should suggest something about the benefits and product qualities. Example: Snuggles.
- It should not be hard to pronounce, recognize, and remember.
- The brand name must be distinctive.
- The name should be easily translated into other languages.
- It should be subject to registration and legal protection.
Decisions Regarding Packaging – This refers to the activities necessary to design and produce the container or packaging of a product. Packaging has become an important factor in selling the product and serves as a marketing tool.
Decisions Regarding the Label – The label identifies the product or brand. It is responsible for describing several things: who made it, where it was made, its content, how it should be used, and how to use it safely. There are several federal and state laws governing labeling, the most important being the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1966. Recently, labels have been affected by unit prices, expiry dates, and nutritional content labels.
How to Decide the Mix of Services – This involves determining what services target customers value and the relative importance of these services. The company should periodically survey its customers to learn about their current service expectations and gather new ideas. Companies need to coordinate decisions regarding the product and service mix.
Providing Product Support Services – Most companies that have equipment start by providing their services themselves. They are interested in being close to the equipment and understanding the problems it presents.
The Customer Service Department – Given the importance of services as marketing tools, many companies have formed large customer service departments responsible for handling complaints, adjustments, credit services, maintenance services, technical services, and customer information.
Decisions Regarding the Product Line
The product line is a group of products that are closely related because they function similarly, are sold to similar consumer groups, are marketed by the same type of channel, or fit within a given price range.
The Decision to Extend the Product Line
The managers of the product line will have to decide the extent of this. A line can be described as too short if the manager can increase profits by adding items, and a line will be too long if the manager can increase profits by removing items from it. Extending the product line is subject to the influence of corporate objectives, which usually spread over time. The manager can put pressure on vendors and distributors to have a complete product line to satisfy their customers. The product line manager aims to increase sales and profits.
Extending Down: The company can expand its line down because it may have started with the upper end to establish a quality image and intends to go down later. They may also be responding to an attack on the top by invading the lower end. Additionally, the company can add a product at the lower end to fill a gap in the market that could attract a new entrant.
Extending Upwards: The decision to extend upward has its risks. Top competitors are well entrenched and can retaliate at the lower end by entering the market. Potential customers might think that the newcomer lacks the capacity to produce quality products. Vendors and distributors may also lack the talent or preparation to meet the higher-end market.
Expansion in Both Directions: Companies in the midrange of the market may choose to extend their lines in both directions.
The Decision of a Complete Line of Products
A product line can be expanded by adding more items within the current range of the line. Complete Product Line: This aims to find more utilities, satisfy distributors, utilize informal production capacity, and strive to be the leader with a complete line that fills gaps left by competitors.
The Decision to Upgrade the Product Line
To upgrade the product line, the central question is whether to remodel the line gradually or all at once. By doing it piece by piece, the company can gauge customer and distributor reactions to new styles before changing the entire line. A major disadvantage of this approach is that competitors can see the changes and begin to redesign their lines accordingly.
Decision on the Product Mix
The Product Mix (or variety of products) represents the set of all product lines and items that any organization offers for sale.
The product mix of a company has four major dimensions:
- Amplitude: Refers to the number of different product lines the company has.
- Extension: Refers to the total number of items the company has.
- Depth: Refers to the number of versions offered by each product line.
- Congruence: Refers to the degree of relationship among the various product lines and their end use, production requirements, distribution channels, or other aspects.
These dimensions of the product mix provide the basis for defining the company’s product strategy. The firm can increase its activities in four ways: by adding new product lines, expanding its product mix, extending existing product lines, or adding more versions of the same product to deepen its product mix.
Decisions Regarding International Products
International marketers face special challenges in their products and packaging. They must first determine which products to introduce in different countries. Then they should decide whether to standardize or adapt their products for world markets. Standardization helps the company develop a consistent global image, reduces production costs, and eliminates duplication of research and development, advertising, and product design. Additionally, markets vary in economic conditions, competition, legal requirements, and physical environments.