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

Elements of Product Planning for Goods and Services 265

products may help the others. Money spent to promote the brand name benefits

more than one product, which cuts promotion costs for each product.

A special kind of family brand is a licensed brand—a well-known brand that

sellers pay a fee to use. For example, the familiar Sunkist brand name has been

licensed to many companies for use on more than 400 products in 30 countries.^16

A company uses individual brands—separate brand names for each product—

when it’s important for the products to each have a separate identity, as when

products vary in quality or type.

If the products are really different, such as Elmer’s glue and Borden’s ice cream,

individual brands can avoid confusion. Some firms use individual brands with sim-

ilar products to make segmentation and positioning efforts easier. Unilever, for

example, markets Aim, Close-Up, and Pepsodent toothpastes, but each involves

different positioning efforts.

Individual brands for

outside and inside

competition

As these trade ads suggest, both

Del Monte and GE want retailers

to remember that many

consumers already know and

trust their brand names.

Internet

Internet Exercise Go to the Procter & Gamble website (www.pg.com) and

click on Product List and Infoand then on Beauty Care.Find out the brand

names of the different shampoos that P&G makes. How are the different

brands positioned, and what target markets do they appeal to?

Sometimes firms use individual brands to encourage competition within the

company. Each brand is managed by a different group within the firm. They argue

that if anyone is going to take business away from their firm, it ought to be their

own brand. However, many firms that once used this approach have reorganized.

Faced with slower market growth, they found they had plenty of competitive

pressure from other firms. The internal competition just made it more difficult to

coordinate different marketing strategies.^17

Products that some consumers see as commodities may be difficult or expensive

to brand. Some manufacturers and middlemen have responded to this problem with

generic products—products that have no brand at all other than identification of

their contents and the manufacturer or middleman. Generic products are usually

offered in plain packages at lower prices. They are quite common in less-developed

nations.^18

Generic “brands”