Product (marketing)

In marketing, a product is an eligible, viable and repeatable option that the offer makes available to the demand, to satisfy a need or fulfill a desire through its use or consumption.

The product is one of the structural components of the marketing mix. The most common case of it is also known as "The Four P" of marketing, along with Price, Place, and Promotion.

Products can present very different valuable combinations to generate demand, which can be focused towards:

• Property: are all the tangible elements.
• Services: they are intangible, they are inseparable (they produce and consume at the same time), they are variable.
• Events: Regular activities such as sporting or cultural events.
• Experiences: for example: I was going through a virgin forest.
• Persons: applies to professionals from different areas, e.g. actors.
• Places: like cities, countries; parks or certain geographical areas.
• Property rights: possession rights that may fall on both physical assets (real property) and financial assets (actions and bonds).
• Institutions: for example universities, foundations, companies (not their goods or if the purchases are very important).
• Information: encyclopedias, books, publications
• Ideas: encompasses business projects, social projects, even internal projects within an organization, also communicate and sell.

Classification of consumer products and services

Depending on your purpose (or purchase situation)

• Consumer assets: are the goods that are consumed quickly and have limited duration or usability. For example: food, fuel, fruits, etc.
• Services: are the activities, uses and benefits that are consumed at the time when they lend, for example, repairs of appliances, haircut, etc.
• Common-use goods: are those products that are part of the usual basket, these are often consumed frequently and do not require purchasing effort.
• Emergency assets: are products that are at the time and precise place for the consumer to use them. Usually the consumer does not plan their purchase but it is very necessary at the time when a need appears.
• Comparison assets: are products that in the purchase process passes by a comparison of intrinsic and extrinsic characteristics.
• Specialty assets: are products with very special features and are intended for a very specific market that demands certain quality standards.
• Durable properties: are those products that have a fairly long life cycle, usually suffer from loss, wear until after several years of use.
• Unearmarked property: consumers do not know about the existence of the product, or if they know it they are not interested in acquiring it, it requires advertising and support from sales staff.

Levels of product tangibility

• Good tangible: is the offer of a tangible good, without any associated service; for example, salt, rice, wheels.
• Well tangible with annexed services: good is sold accompanied by one or more services; for example, cars, machines.
• Hybrid: equal share of goods and services; for example, restaurant, tailoring.
• Main service with annexed secondary goods: for example, hotel, airlines..
• Pure service: the offer is basically a service, for example, haircut, gym, nursing care.

Dissection of the product

For a business man, the product should not be seen as the result of an industrial process, nor as the pride and satisfaction of a company, its manager or its property. The product, for a marketing man, should be considered as a satisfier, that is, something that is intended to satisfy certain needs.

Product attributes and benefits

The attributes are specific characteristics that a product presents. Among them stand out

• Formulations and ingredients
• Components and functions
• Physical dimensions and characteristics
• Packaging and packaging

On the other hand, the benefits correspond to the result expected by the demand when making use of the product's attributes. In a broad sense, the benefits can be:

• Sensory
• Emotional
• Cognitive
• Functional
• Relatives

In general, the demand tends to be more interested in the benefits than the attributes. For example: a triple-ply toilet paper (attribute: composed of three layers of paper) is softer (sensory benefit) and more resistant (functional benefit). However, an adequate definition of attributes serves as a key component both to generate credibility in the communication and to establish links towards productive specifications and quality systems that make sustainable marketing promises.

It is estimated that there are 2.81 X 10^18 (2.81 trillion) potentially valuable combinations to configure products, thus explaining the large number of failed products on the market, generated by trial and error. For this reason, the importance of configuring the offer with technical criteria (innovation and market research and engineering) and later translating them into value propositions that orderly integrate the most relevant requirements, differentiators and preference generators for demand is emphasized.

Other elements such as the brand, the image of the product, the packaging design and the image of the producing company correspond to the symbolization of the offer, not to its configuration, so they must be treated as different components of the mix marketing. For its part, the service provided by the company, as well as the guarantees and the price requested in exchange for the offer delivered correspond to the terms of exchange.

Levels of a product

The classical theory of product levels starts from identifying an essential need or desire, from which additional elements are built, gradually making the offer more robust:

• Essential or substantial product: responds to a need, desire, order or terminal value requested by the demand (Medina, 2012). For example, by drinking coffee, the person seeks an energizing drink (sensory-functional benefit).
• Generic product: minimum version of the product that in attributes and benefits responds to the essential need for demand. For example, 250 gram coffee container.
• Expected output: set of benefits and attributes that demand seeks to purchase a product on a voluntary, recurring and sustainable basis. For example, the container has a expiration date, which is protected from moisture, which is easy to dissolve.
• Increased product: includes other benefits and attributes added to the product, above what the competition provides; may be a better service or better features. For example, a phone number and email for queries and claims, which are placed on the label different recipes and ways to prepare coffee.
• Potential product: it is to anticipate the wishes and requirements of the buyers, for the improvement or development of a new product. For example, consumers might need to be added to coffee, minerals and vitamins in the future for health care and not just an energizer.

As can be seen, the scaling from a basic product to a potential product gradually includes not only attributes and benefits of the offer, but also gradually incorporates terms of trade, configuring more valuable offers for the demand. In general, the essential, generic and expected elements of the product can be grouped into requirements, the increased ones have corresponding competitive differentiators, while the potential ones are linked to preference generators.

Integration of the product with the rest of the marketing mix

For marketing, its offer is much more than the product and therefore the specialist in the field proposes from a marketing mix perspective, that is, harmonizing the four elements of it in a coordinated way. This is due to the observation of the demand and especially to the requirements of its target group.

For the consumer, the product, in addition to having a series of attributes or physical aspects, has many psychological attributes and perceives the offer in a comprehensive way. For example, for the consumer a car is not just a certain amount of steel and plastic. From the consumer's point of view, a car can be young or old, nice, elegant, sporty, masculine. A cigarette plus a lot of nicotine and other harmful substances wrapped in a paper for the consumer is something else. The consumer views certain brands as masculine, others as adventurous, and others as feminine. The consumer therefore builds in his brain an image of the product that includes multiple aspects. A product can be related to certain types of consumers, specific situations of use and social or sociological aspects. In this way, it can be considered that a beer brand is appropriate for workers or that it is feminine. Products are also often associated with certain behaviors; such as beer brands that try to identify friendship and partying with their brand.

The distinctions between essential, generic, expected, augmented and potential products make it possible to distinguish the nature of the product -which leads to productive specifications- and the gradual integration of other components of the marketing mix until it is made available to users and consumers. Products, in order to be successful in the market, in addition to being developed, must be properly integrated with your pricing strategy, distributed in the right channels and appropriately symbolized (first emphasizing differentiation and then positioning in the mind of your segment).

Other questions of analysis

You must also analyze the product line (product mix) and assortment (in the case of wholesale and retail distributors); the brand and brand strategies, the container and label, and the packaging.

Curve of the product life cycle

Another issue that must be analyzed is the life cycle of the product, its stages range from R&D, introduction, growth, maturity, decline. In the successive stages, the promotion, distribution and price strategies will vary, as well as the different modifications that are made to the product, or product management. The product life cycle has its theoretical foundation or reason for being in the theory of diffusion of innovations.

Also at a corporate strategic level, a portfolio guts analysis must be carried out of products of the company with the matrix BCG and the development penetration of new products-markets matrix of Ansoff.