1. Products, services and brands: Building Customer Value
Chapter 8
Products, services and brands: Building Customer Value

4. Products, services and experiences
Product: anything that can be offered to market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption that might satisfy a want or need
Service: any activity or benefit that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything

5. Levels of product and services

11. Organization, person, place and social marketing
Organization marketing: consists of activities undertaken to create, maintain or change the attitudes and behavior of target consumers toward an organization.
Person marketing: consists of activities undertaken to create, maintain or change the attitudes and behavior of target consumers toward particular people.
Place marketing: consists of activities undertaken to create, maintain or change the attitudes and behavior of target consumers toward particular places.
Social marketing: the use of commercial marketing concepts and tools in programs designed to influence individuals’ behavior to improve their well being and that of society.

12. Product and service decisions
Marketers make product and service decisions at three levels:
Individual product decisions
Product line decisions
Product mix decisions

13. Individual Product decisions

14. Product attributes
Product quality: that characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied customer needs. Quality can be defined as freedom from defects.
Total quality management (TQM) is an approach in which all of a company’s people are involved in constantly improving the quality of products, services and business processes.
Companies are taking a return on quality approach viewing quality as an investment and holding quality efforts accountable for bottom line results.
Product quality means performance quality- the product's ability to perform its functions.
Conformance quality refers to freedom from defects and consistency in delivering a targeted level of performance.

15. Product attributes
Product features: a product can be offered with varying features. Features are competitive tool for differentiating the company’s products from competitor’s products. Being the first producer to introduce a valued new feature is one of the most effective ways to compete.
One way to add customer value is through distinctive product style and design.
Style simply describes the appearance of a product. Style can be eye catching or boring.
Design is a larger concept than style. Design goes to the very heart of a product. Good design contributes to a product’s usefulness as well as to its looks. Design begins with observing customers, deeply understanding their needs, and shaping their product use experience.

17. Branding
Brand: a name, term, sign, symbol, design or a combination of these that identifies the products or services of one seller of group of sellers and differentiates them from those of competitors.
The most distinctive skill of professional marketers is their ability to build and manage brands.

18. Packaging
Packaging: the activities of designing and producing the container or wrapper for a product.
Poorly designed packages can cause headaches for consumers and lost sales for the company where as innovative packaging can give a company an advantage over competitors and boost sales.

19. Packaging
Old packaging
New packaging

20. Labeling The label identifies the product or brand.
The label might also describe several things such as who made it, where it was made, when it was made, its contents, how it is to be used, and how to use it safely.
It might help to promote brand, support its positioning, and connect with customers. Labels have become an important element in broader marketing campaigns.
Labeling has been affected in recent times by unit pricing (stating the price per unit of a standard measure), open dating (stating the expected shelf life of product), and nutritional labeling (stating nutritional values in the product).

21. Product support services
Support services are an important part of the customer’s overall brand experience.
Keeping customers happy after sale is the key to building lasting relationships. It is very important to take care of customers before, during and after the sale.
Many companies use a sophisticated support services with a combination of phone, , Internet, interactive voice and data technologies to provide support services that were not possible before.

22. Product line decisions
Product line: a group of products that are closely related because they 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.
Product line expansion: A company can expand its product line in 2 ways:
Product line filling
Product line stretching
A company can stretch its line in the following ways:
Upward
Downward
Both upward and downward

23. Product mix decisions
Product mix: the set of all product lines and items that a particular seller offers for sale
A company’s product mix has four important dimensions:
Product mix width: refers to the number of different product lines the company carries.
Product mix length: refers to the total number of items a company carries within its product lines.
Product mix depth: refers to the number of versions (styles, sizes, colors, models) offered for each product in the line.
Product mix consistency: refers to how closely related the various product lines are in end use, production requirements, distribution channels or some other way.

24. Product mix of a Men’s clothing store
Product mix width
Shirts
Pants
Suits
Casual
Formal
Sporty
Product mix length
6 sizes
6 sizes
8 sizes
Product mix depth
5 colors
5 colors
7 colors

25. Nature and Characteristics of a service

26. Service profit chain
The chain that links service firm profits with employee ad customer satisfaction.
Successful service companies focus their attention both on employees and customers.
The chain consists of five links:
Internal service quality
Satisfied and productive service employees
Greater service value
Satisfied and loyal customers
Healthy service profits and growth

27. Types of service marketing

28. Building strong brands: Major brand strategy decisions

29. Brand positioning
Brand positioning: can be done at any of three levels:
Companies can position the brand on product attributes.
A brand can better positioned by associating its name with a desirable benefit.
The strongest brands go beyond attribute or benefit positioning. They are positioned on strong beliefs and values, engaging customers on a deep, emotional level.
A brand is the company's promise to deliver a specific set of features, benefits, services and experiences consistently to buyers.
The brand promise must be simple and honest. For instance, Hotel Radisson offers luxurious rooms and a truly memorable experience but do not promise low price. On the other hand, Grand Prince Hotel in Mirpur offers decent rooms and services at an affordable price and does not promise expensive furnishings or great experience.

30. Brand name selection Should suggest products benefits and qualities
Easy to pronounce, recognize and remember
Name should be distinctive
Name should be extendable
Should easily translate into foreign language
Should be capable of registration and legal protection

31. Brand protection
Once the brand name is chosen, it must be protected. Many firms try to build a brand that eventually gets identified with the product category.
For instance, Kleenex, Scotch tape, Ziploc, BAND- AID, Jell-O etc.
To protect brands, marketers present them carefully using the word brand and the registered trademark symbol, as in, BAND-AID brand adhesive bandages.
Brand name can be lost if people misuse it.

32. Brand sponsorship A manufacturer has four sponsorship options:
Manufacturer’s brand: when a product is launched as a national brand or a manufacturer's brand. For instance, when Samsung sells its own products under its own brand names (Samsung cell phones, refrigerators, TVs etc.)

33. Store brand/distributor brand/private brand: when a brand is created and owned by a reseller (a wholesaler or a retailer). The retailer will market the product under its own brand name. Prices for private brands are usually cheaper than competing brand names. For example, Great Value Food products (by Walmart) etc.

34. Licensing
Licensing: involves contractual agreement whereby firms can use logos of other brands, names of well known celebrities or characters from popular movies and books to market their own brands for some fixed fees.
For example, a company using the logo and design of a popular character, Mickey Mouse, on its products like t-shirts, mugs, pencil boxes etc.
Licensed characters range from Disney, Barbie, Star Wars, Scooby Doo, Hello Kitty to the more recent Dora the Explorer, Harry Potter etc.
Currently a number of top selling retail toys are products based on television shows and movies.

36. Co -branding
Co-branding: the practice of using the established brand names of two different companies on the same product.
Co-branding can take advantage of the complementary strengths of two brands.
It also allows a company to expand its existing brand into a category it might otherwise have difficulty entering alone.

38. Brand development strategies

39. Brand development strategies
Line extension: extending an existing brand name to new forms, colors, sizes, ingredients, or flavors of an existing product category. Maggi introducing Maggi soup of various flavors like creamy chicken, rich tomato, sweet corn, mixed vegetable etc.
Brand extension: extending an existing brand name to new product categories. For instance: Maggi introducing Maggi soup, Maggi tomato ketchup, Maggi seasonings, Maggi chicken stocks beside Maggi noodles etc.
Multi-brands: extending an existing product category by adding new brand to it. For example, Unilever soap brands of Lux, Rexona, Dove, Lifebuoy, Dettol, Cinthol, Pears etc.
New brands: extending a product line by adding new product category and new brand to the existing ones. For instance, Tata motors introducing Tata Ace brand of pickup trucks.