Product Flashcards
What is a product?
A product is a good or a service that is sold to customers or other businesses.
How is product differentiation created?
- Establishing a strong brand image (personality) for a good or service.
- Making clear the unique selling point (USP) of a good or service, for example, by using the tag line quality items for less than a pound for a chain of discount shops.
- Offering a better location, features, functions, design, appearance or selling price than rival products.
What are the challenges for a business about product?
- making products different from competitors
- ensuring that customers recognise that the product is different
How can you differentiate a product?
- distinctive design
- branding
- performance
What is a product range?
Product range is a collection of similar products offered by the same business.
What is a help spread risk?
A help spread risk is a decline in one product that may be offset by sales of other products.
What is branding?
- product with a unique character, design or image
- consistent and well recognised
- helps consumers believe that it is a quality good or service they are being offered.
What are the benefits of branding?
- inspires customer loyalty leading to repeat sales
- can charge higher prices, especially if brand is market leader
- retailers or service sellers want to stock brands
What are own label brands?
Own label brands are retailers which uses its own name on a product rather than manufacturers.
Why is packaging used?
- protection of contents
- distribution to customer
- selling
- customer convenience - e.g multi-pack
What is the role that packaging plays “in selling”?
- if a product cannot be differentiated by it’s features or designs, then packaging becomes really important.
- it helps to advertise and promote brand image.
- help maintain quality standards.
- designed to encourage impulse buying.
- packaging also needs to appeal to the distributors.
What are the 4 stages of the Product Life Cycle?
- Launch
- Growth
- Maturity
- Decline
What happens at the development and launch stage?
- lots of advertising to make people aware of the product
- sales are low
- price of product is often high
- company should usually expect low profits
What happens at the growth stage?
- more customers as brand loyalty is established
- sales rising
- higher profits
What happens at the maturity and saturation stage?
- sales have peaked
- most profitable stage
- competitors may have bought out similar products
- market could be saturated
