Marketing Chapter 9

What are the important brand characteristics?

--positive connotation and be memorable --easy to say, easy to spell, easy to read --good fit the target market, fit the product's benefits, fit the customer's culture

Managing existing products

1. Brand Managers 2. Product Category Managers 3. Market Managers

Explain how marketers structure organizations for new and existing product management.

1. Develop Product Objectives; 2. Design product strategies; 3. Make technical product decisions

What are some qualities of effective packaging?

1.Packaging of other brands in same product category 2.Choice of materials and image they project 3.Environmental impact 4.Shape and color influences on image 5.Graphic information to be portrayed

Brand Manager vs. Product Category Manager

A brand manager is an individual who is responsible for developing and implementing the marketing plan for a single brand. A product category manager are individuals who are responsible for developing and implementing the marketing plan for all the brands and products within a product category.

Total Quality Management (TQM)

A management philosophy that focuses on satisfying customers through empowering employees to be an active part of continuous quality improvement

Packaging

A package is the covering or container for a product, but it is also a lot more. Packaging protects the product. It makes it easy for consumers to handle and store the product. Packaging also plays an important role in communicating brand personality.

Generic Branding

A strategy in which products are not branded and are sold at the lowest price possible

Ingredient

Branded materials become component parts of another product. Dell computers has "Intel inside."

Private Brand

Brands that a certain retailer or distributor owns and sells

Decline Stage of Product Life Cycle

Characterized by a decrease in product category sales. Although a single firm may still be profitable, the market as a whole begins to shrink, profits decline, there are fewer variations of the product, and suppliers pull out. In this stage, there are usually many competitors, with none having a distinct advantage. A firm's major product decision in the decline stage is whether to keep the product. If the firm decides to keep the product, advertising and other marketing communications may be slashed while prices are reduced. If the firm decides to drop the product, it can either phase it out by cutting production in stages and letting existing stocks run out or simply drop the product immediately.

What do product strategies include?

Choices regarding product benefits, features, styling, branding, labeling, and packaging.

Introduction of Product Life Cycle

Customers get the first chance to purchase the good or service. The goal here is to get first-time buyers to try the product.

Individual vs. Family

Family brands provide an umbrella under which multiple products can be marketed (Example: Nike)

Product line

Firm's total product offering designed to satisfy a single need or desire of target customers

What do product objectives provide?

Focus and direction and should support the overall marketing objectives. They must be measurable, clear, unambiguous, feasible, and in line with customer needs.

Tactical decisions

Include issues of branding and packaging

What are objectives set for?

Individual products and for product lines/mixes

What are the five Branding Strategies?

Individual vs Family National vs Store Licensing Co-Branding Ingredient

Explain how branding strategies create product identity?

It is important to give a product an identity and set it apart from the competition. This is the purpose of branding. Branding is an extremely important (and expensive) element of product strategies. Nearly 80 to 90 percent of all new brands fail.

Licensing

One firm sells the right to another to use a legally protected brand name for a specific purpose and for a specific period of time. George Lucas may license the Star Wars brand to a maker of kids' backpacks.

How are projects managed in different stages of the product life cycle?

Products go through four distinct stages from birth to death—introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. The life cycle can be very long when marketing management continues to enhance the product. In the case of fashions and fads, the life cycle is much shorter.

Growth Stage of the Product Life Cycle

Sales increase rapidly while profits increase and peak. Marketing's goal is to encourage brand loyalty by convincing the market that this brand is superior to others.

Market Managers

Some firms have developed a market manager structure in which different managers focus on specific customer groups rather than on the products the company makes.

Product Category Managers

Some larger firms have such diverse product offerings that there is a need for extensive coordination. In such cases, organizing for product management may include product category managers who coordinate the mix of product lines within the more general product category and who consider the addition of new-product lines

National vs. Store

Store brands (private label brands) are exclusive to a given retailer and are designed to strongly compete with nationally marketed goods.

Cannibalism

The loss of sales of an existing brand when a new item in a product line or product family is introduced

Product Management

The systematic and usually team- based approach to coordinating all aspects of a product's marketing initiative including all elements of the marketing mix.

Product mix

The total set of all products that a firm offers for sale With a relatively large product mix, strategic decisions may affect two or more products simultaneously. The firm must think in terms of its entire portfolio of products.

Brand Equity

The value of a brand to an organization

Maturity Stage of Product Life Cycle

This stage of the product life cycle is usually the longest. Sales peak and then begin to level off and even decline while profit margins narrow. Competition grows leading to price reductions and reminder advertising. During the maturity stage, firms will try to sell their product through as many outlets as possible because availability is crucial in a competitive market. To remain competitive and maintain market share, marketers may adjust the marketing mix. Attracting new users of the product can be another strategy that marketers use in this stage. Market development means introducing an existing product to a market that doesn't currently use it. Taking a product overseas could be an example.

Co-Branding

Two brands combine to create a new product, providing greater recognition or other strengths than either could achieve alone. Post cereals sells a chocolaty Oreo cereal

Brand Managers

When a firm has different brands within a single product category, each brand may have its own brand manager.

Brand

a name, a term, a symbol, or any other unique element of a product that identifies one firm's product(s) and sets it apart from the competition