Simple general definition of product
A product is any physical or virtual offering you provide to customer’s need.
Questions after that:
- Why do we say offering? Because it could be Service, Goods or combination of them.
- Why do we provide the products? Because people pay for something that can solve their problem and be valuable for them.
- Why do we say physical or virtual? Because they could be both. For instance Labtop, Book, Milk, House are physical products and SAAS, BAAS or education are virtual which is offering you an experience, access or services. Plus these two, it could be combination of them which is called: “hybrid”.
Product Characteristics
product to be called a ‘Product’ need to have certain characteristics which are defined implicit and explicit. According to Professor Sturdivant:
1. Explicit Characteristics
Explicit Characteristics are those which are seen nearly consistently by all customers in the same way. In other words, there’s not much difference among the buyers about these characteristics within the item. There’s a common assention among all as to the presence and nature of these characteristics. There are five such attributes in this type:
2. Implicit characteristics
Implicit characteristics are those about which there is little disagreement among people as to their existence and nature. Consumer disagreements over the existence and nature of specific product characteristics take the form of the product’s intrinsic characteristics.
These disagreements exist because each person has a distinctive and slightly different perspective on the product. One person’s perception and another person’s perception are not the same. These various opinions of disagreement can be referred to as a product’s implicit characteristics.
Product types
Technically, All products are categorised into two types depending on who is the final consumer of that.
1. Consumer Products
Consumer Products are products offered to the final customer who consumes them for their needs, such as Milk, phone, smart watch and…
2. Industrial products
Industrial products are products which are utilized to produce other products. These products cannot be used directly, have to be processed such as raw materials, machinery, and…
Product Levels
Product according to Philip Kotler has got Five layers. Product Levels model provides a way to show the different levels of customers needs.
1. Core Benefit
The core benefits are the fundamental needs of customers. For example, the core benefit of a car is to tabe you from A to B.
2. Generic Product
The generic products are stripped-down versions of the product that only have the features required for it to operate. For car we can say: seats, wheels and…
3. Expected Product
The expected products are the set of features that the customers expect when they want to buy the product. In our car example, this would include speakers, air conditioning system and…
4. Augmented Product
The augmented products refers to any product extra features, or services that help differentiate the product from its competitors in the market.
In our car example, this could be the free transit of car to your house and…
5. Potential Product
The potential products include all augmentations and transformations the product might undergo in the future. This means that to continue to surprise and delight customers the product must be augmented and have special values for users. In car example we could have a speciale perfume gifted to customer according to their taste or having special cover for seats according to their tastes.
