WEEK 10 DB
Consumer products, which are spin-offs purchased by final consumers for individualized consumption, are classified into four main groups. The first group is the convenience products, which are the basic items required by almost every customer. They are the most common type of products because they are frequently needed. Some of these products include fast foods and other home products such as detergents. The customer puts less thought in purchasing these items. They are therefore low priced and placed almost everywhere in retail outlets so that the customers can easily find them.
The second group is the shopping products which consists of products which are usually compared by the customers depending on their characteristics such as quality and efficiency. This means that shopping products are bought less frequently than convenience ones. They are thus not found at the customers’ disposal as it is for the convenience ones. The products are however given more sales advertisement to be able to communicate to the customers their suitability. Examples of such products are clothing, furniture and electronics.
The third group of consumer products are the specialty products which are only bought on special purposes. Good examples of these products are high profile clothes or vehicles. There is usually not much thought put into the selection of these products but their effort and the aim of the purchase has to be great to implement it. Specialty products are therefore not easily found. The buyers have to make an effort to reach the dealers.
Lastly, unsought products. These are products that are usually not known by customers until they are needed. An example is the pre-planned funeral services that are only sought for once they are needed. These type of products, therefore, require more aggressive advertising to bring their knowledge to the customers.
A product line refers to a unique category of products that an organization provides while a product mix is the total number of these groups that the same firm owns. Coca-cola, for example, has a total of 3500 different product lines such as Minute Maid, Fanta and Thumbs Up, all which form the companies and product mix.
WEEK 11 DB
Advertising plays a major role in the introductory stage of the product life cycle, and product differentiation plays a major role in its maturity.
High learning and low learning products differ in that the concept behind low learning products are easily understood by the customers and therefore readily diffused into the market. High learning products, on the other hand, require more knowledge for the customers to understand what they are about. This, therefore, means that they have a longer introductory stage than low learning. They, however, have longer maturity stage once the product is adopted by the customers.
The five categories of product adopters in the diffusion of innovations are the innovators, the early adopters, the early majority, the late majority and the laggards. Each group different on how readily they are ready to accept a new product. The innovators readily embrace the new products while the laggards might never even consider buying the product no matter how high the prices go.
WEEK 12 DB
The I’s of services include intangibility, inconsistency, inseparability and inventory. Intangibility refers to the intangibility of services, meaning that unlike products, they hard to quantify and perform an evaluation, for example, insurance. Inconsistency shows that every service has to face the problem of inconsistency throughout their life cycle, meaning that companies have to invest more in standardization and training to remain in the maturity stage for long. Inseparability shows the cohesion between the services and its mode of delivery while inventory shows works to calculate the production capacity of the service.
The inventory costs for an accounting firm with certified public accountants would be high if the demand for the services is low. This is because the salaries of the qualified personnel are high and have to be paid regardless of whether sales are made or not.