Basic Marketing: A Global Managerial Approach

Perreault−McCarthy: Basic

Marketing: A

Global−Managerial

Approach, 14/e

9. Elements of Product
   Planning for Goods and
   Services

Text © The McGraw−Hill

Companies, 2002

When Volkswagen sells a new Beetle, is it just selling a certain number of nuts

and bolts, some sheet metal, an engine, and four wheels?

When Air Jamaica sells a ticket for a flight to the Caribbean, is it just selling so

much wear and tear on an airplane and so much pilot fatigue?

The answer to these questions is no.Instead, what these companies are really

selling is the satisfaction, use, or benefit the customer wants.

All consumers care about is that their new Beetles look cute and keep running.

And when they take a trip on Air Jamaica, they really don’t care how hard it is on

the plane or the crew. They just want a safe, comfortable trip. In the same way,

when producers and middlemen buy a product, they’re interested in the profit they

can make from its purchase—through use or resale.

Productmeans the need-satisfying offering of a firm. The idea of “Product” as

potential customer satisfaction or benefits is very important. Many business man-

agers get wrapped up in the technical details involved in producing a product. But

that’s not how most customers view the product. Most customers think about a

product in terms of the total satisfaction it provides. That satisfaction may require

a “total” product offering that is really a combination of excellent service, a physical

248 Chapter 9

The Kodak case highlights some important topics we’ll discuss in this chapter

and the next. Here we’ll start by looking at how customers see a firm’s product.

Then we’ll talk about product classes to help you better understand marketing strat-

egy planning. We’ll also talk about branding, packaging, and warranties. In summary,

as shown in Exhibit 9-1, there are many strategy decisions related to the Product area.

Advantix more attention. For

example, Wal-Mart put Kodak’s

$50 camera on special display.

And many photo labs offered

consumers a money-back

guarantee on any Advantix

prints that were not com-

pletely satisfactory.

For many customers in the

target market, Kodak’s Advan-

tix line offers new benefits that

they couldn’t get before. But it

involves new products that are

basically incremental to what

Kodak was already selling and

what customers were already

buying. Digital cameras and

pictures are a more revolution-

ary type of new product.

Consumers who adopt them

will change their picture-taking

behavior, and, as Kodak knows,

they’ll certainly change their

film-buying and film-processing

behavior too. It won’t happen

overnight, but digital cameras

will make traditional cameras

obsolete. And in the process

the competition that Kodak

faces has already changed, in

some cases dramatically.

Take, for example, HP’s

DeskJet brand color printers. If

you buy a digital camera, the

odds are that you’ll print out

the pictures on a DeskJet, not

on a Kodak printer. So just as

Kodak is fighting for shelf

space against low-price Fuji

and dealer brands in the

mature market for 35mm film,

it is fighting new and very dif-

ferent competitors in the

fast-growing market related to

digital photography.^1

Customers buy
satisfaction, not parts

The Product Area Involves Many Strategy Decisions

What Is a Product?