Mkt 305 1st Edition Exam 2 Study Guide Product What a company is in business to provide to its customers Product quality is the product s ability to satisfy a customer s needs throughout the entirety of their buying experience Goods vs Services Goods are tangible usually physical items usually produced in large quantities away from the customer Services are intangible things such as a vacation or a ticket to a show and are usually produced directly in the presence of the consumer Product Line a set of individual products that are closely related Ex Dell makes laptops desktop PCs tablets and more Items in a product line meet similar needs are distributed on the SAME channels and target similar if not the same consumers Branding names terms symbols designs color schemes or some combination of those things to identify a product or company Brand recognition is important Brand familiarity Customers associate brands with experiences and will usually pay more for a familiar brand over a non familiar one Good brand names can be pronounced in different languages are easy to spell and read 1 2 3 4 Rejection customers won t buy the brand unless its image is changed Non recognition customers don t recognize the brand ex Ticonderoga Recognition customers are familiar with the brand ex Gatorade Preference customers will generally choose this brand when available ex HP LaserJet Insistence customers insist on this brand and will search for it instead of buying substitutes These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute Types of Brands 1 Individual 2 Family 3 Generic Roles of packaging 1 Passive Promotion 2 Protection 3 Enhancement presentation is everything Warranty What a company promises about its product Product Life Cycle The stages a product goes through from beginning to end 1 2 3 4 Introduction Growth Maturity Decline Pioneers vs Followers Pioneers come up with a new idea to take into productions and fast followers quickly try to replicate it Stages of New Product Development 1 2 3 4 5 Idea generation Screening Idea evaluation Development Commercialization Customer Involvement in NPD 1 Co Creation 2 Alpha testing 3 Beta Testing 4 Usability Testing Market Research mimics the scientific method Market Research Process 1 2 3 4 5 6 Define a problem Analyze the current situation Gather problem specific data Analyze interpret the data Test Solutions Solve the problem Primary vs Secondary Data Primary data is data you gather from your own experiments and secondary data is data that already existed Confidence Interval your level of certainty about the variation between actual behavior and predicted behavior Consumer Product Classes 1 Convenience Products Products that customers need but don t require much time or effort to buy 2 Shopping Products Customers have time to shop around with competitors to find the best price 3 Specialty Products Customers desire a very specific product and will wait to get the right one from the right place 4 Unsought Products Products customers aren t even aware they want yet or they don t know it even exists Homegeneous vs Heterogeneous shopping products Homegeneous products the customer will view as all the same and they just want o lowest price Heterogeneous products the customers sees as different and they will want to inspect and examine before buying Specialty Products are any product a customer will spend time looking to obtain Channels of Distribution How the final purchaser ends up with the product This can be Direct Channel Straight from the Producer Indirect Channel From an Intermediary Hybrid Both Channel conflict occurs when multiple entities have the same product and are competing for the same customer Vertical Channel Conflict Occurs when firms at different levels in the channel of distribution are competing for the same customers producer vs Intermediary Horizontal Channel Conflict Occurs when firms at the same level in the channel are competing for the same customers intermediary vs intermediary Managing Channel Conflicts 1 2 3 4 5 Product exclusivity Territory exclusivity Market exclusivity Profit sharing Ignore it Intensive Distribution You allow as many intermediaries as possible to sell you product Selective Distribution Only intermediaries who give your product special attention can sell it Exclusive Distribution Only one intermediary can sell your product