Product Approach – A method used by salespeople to approach prospects in which salespeople demonstrate the product features and benefits as they walk up the prospects.
Product Assortment – The collection of products (items, families, lines) that comprise the offering of a given seller. Though sometimes thought to be only a collection of categories of products, more common usage makes term similar to product mix. product assortment is used more by resellers; product mix more by manufacturers.
Product Attributes – The characteristics by which products are identified and differentiated. Product attributes usually comprise features, functions, benefits and uses.
Product Champion – A person who takes an inordinate interest in seeing that a particular process or product is fully developed and marketed. The role varies from situations calling for little more than stimulating awareness of the item to extreme cases in which the champion tries to force the item past the strongly entrenched internal resistance of company policy or that of objecting parties.
Product Class – A group of products that are homogeneous or generally considered as substitutes for each other. The class is considered as narrow or broad depending on how substitutable the various products are. For example, a narrow product class of breakfast meats might be bacon, ham and sausage. A broad class would include all other meat and meat substitutes even occasionally sold for breakfast use.
Product Concept – A verbal or pictorial version of a proposed new product. the concept consists of (1) one or more benefits it ill yield, (2) its general form, and (3) the technology used to achieve the form. A new product idea becomes a concept when it achieves at least one benefit and either the form or the technology. Further work in the new product development process gradually clarifies and confirms those two and adds the third. A concept becomes a product when it is sold successfully in the market place; prior to that, it is still undergoing development, even if marketed.
Product Design Models – Optimal product design models are often based on consumers’ perceptions and preferences data and have typically been formulated in the context of mutidimensional scaling methods or conjoint analysis. In the latter case, simulation and various optimization programs have been used.
Product Differentiation – One or more product attributes that make one product different from another. The differentiation may or may no be favorable, and thus constitute a differential advantage. the difference may or may not be promoted to the consumer.
Product Evolution – The gradual change in a product, as it is modified by its seller, to keep it competitive or to permit it to enter new markets. It is similar to the patterns of evolution in nature.
Product Form – The physical shape or nature of a good or the sequential steps in a service. form is provided by one or more technologies and yields benefits to the user; for example, many technologies are used to make a front-wheel drive form of an automobile. products of the same form make up a group within a product class (e.g., all front-wheel drive automobiles). Differences in form of service separate discount stock brokers and full-service stock brokers.
Product Hierarchy – An organizational chart type of array of the products offered in a given market, breaking first into product class, then product for, then variations on form, then brand. For the transportation market, the top layer is broken into cars, trucks, buses etc. The second layer breaks cars by form (sedans, stations, wagons, convertibles), trucks by form (semi heavy duty, pick-up) etc. The third layer breaks each of these class/form groupings one more time, for example showing automobiles sedans as two-doors, four doors, etc. The fourth layer breaks each of these smaller groups into brands (Ford, Chevrolet, etc.) There are various options within these product hierarchy dimensions, so that the array can be designed to fit the needs of the analyst. the hierarchy concept fits services as well as it does goods.
Product Innovation – (1) The act of creating a new product or process. It includes invention as well as the work required to bring an idea or concept into final form. (2) A particular new product or process. An innovation may have various degrees of newness, from very little to highly discontinuous, but that must include at least some degree of newness to the market, not just to the firm.
Product Introduction – The first stage of the product life cycle, during which the new item is announced to the market and offered for sale. Most methods of market testing are considered preintroduction, but many marketers call the market roll out an introduction because of the commitment implied in the method. If successful during the introduction the new product enters the second (growth) stage.
Product Liability – 1. (legislation definition) Product liability is concerned with injuries caused by products that are defectively manufactures, processed, or distributed. Liability for such injures attaches to all members of distributive chain from manufacturers to retailers. 2. ( product development definition) The obligation a seller incurs regarding the safety of the product. The liability maybe be implied by the custom or common practice in the field, stated in the warranty, or decreed by law. If injury occurs, various defenses are prescribed by law and judicial precedent. Sellers are expected to offer adequate instructions and warnings about a product’s use, and these, too, have precise legal bases.
Product Life Cycle – 1. (product development definition) (from biology) The four stages that a new product is thought to go through from birth to death: introductory, growth, maturity, and decline. controversy surrounds whether products do indeed go through such cycles in any systematic, predictable way. The product life cycle concept is primarily applicable to product forms, less to product classes, and very poorly to individual brands. 2. (strategic marketing definition) this describes the stages in the sales history of a product. The product life cycle (PLC) has four premises: 1) that product have a limited life; 2) that product sales pass through distinct stages, each stage have different implications for the seller; 3) that profits from the product vary at different stages in the life cycle; and 4) that product require different strategies at different stages of the life cycle. The product life cycle has four stages: (1) introduction – the slow sales growth that follows the introduction of the new product (2) growth – the rapid sales growth that accompanies product acceptance; (3) maturity – the plateauing of sales growth when the product has been accepted by most potential buyers; and (4) decline – the decline of sales that results as the product is replaced (by a substitute) or as it goes into disfavor.