Crafting the Offer: Products
Summary
This chapter provided an in-depth exploration of products, with a particular focus on the service sectors such as tourism and hospitality.
Key Takeaways
- Understanding Products: Products are bundles of attributes designed to satisfy consumer needs and wants. They can be classified using models like levels of a product (core, tangible, augmented, and promised) and types of consumer products (convenience, shopping, specialty, and unsought).
- Branding: Effective branding involves creating a strong identity that resonates emotionally with consumers, leveraging visual elements and consistent messaging to build loyalty.
- New Product Development (NPD): The NPD process helps transform creative ideas into market-ready offerings. Several models and frameworks have emerged to support successful NPD.
- Packaging: Beyond functionality, packaging serves as a powerful marketing tool that communicates brand values and influences purchasing decisions.
- Service Marketing Frameworks: The 8 Ps of services marketing, servicescape model, Lovelock’s categories of services, and other frameworks help manage the unique challenges of service delivery.
- Service Quality Management: Tools like the services marketing triangle, service profit chain, gap model, and RATER framework provide structured approaches to assessing and enhancing service quality.
- Customer Experience Management (CEM): CEM enhances service quality by ensuring consistent and positive interactions with the brand across all touchpoints.
- Strategic Integration: Combining product understanding, branding strategies, new product development insights, packaging techniques, services marketing frameworks, and CEM principles leads to comprehensive marketing strategies that align with organizational goals in competitive sectors like tourism and hospitality.
Exercises
Check Your Understanding
Exercise 1: Product Levels Analysis
Scenario: You are launching a new rock-climbing gym in Vancouver.
Task: Using the levels of a product framework, analyze this service product offering.
Recommended Answer:
- Core Product: Physical fitness, challenge, and personal achievement.
- Tangible Product: Climbing walls, safety equipment, change rooms, and training areas.
- Augmented Product: Expert instruction, belay certification courses, climbing community events, and a mobile app for booking.
- Promised Product: Improved strength and confidence, social connections with fellow climbers, and an urban adventure experience.
Exercise 2: Service and Experience Products
Scenario: Refer to the rock-climbing gym in Exercise 1.
Task: Analyze its service offering using the four characteristics of services (intangibility, inseparability, variability, and perishability) and propose solutions for each challenge.
Recommended Answer:
| Characteristic & Challenge | Solution |
|---|---|
| Intangibility: Difficulty showcasing the climbing experience | Create virtual tours, post videos of climbers, offer free trial sessions |
| Inseparability: Service quality depends on instructor presence | Implement rigorous staff training, maintain consistent service standards |
| Variability: Different instructor styles and skill levels | Standardize teaching methods, develop detailed instruction manuals |
| Perishability: Unused capacity during off-peak hours | Dynamic pricing, special off-peak programs, membership incentives |
Exercise 3: Types of Consumer Products
Task: Classify each of the following tourism products according to the types of consumer products model:
- Airport coffee
- Luxury cruise package
- Custom-designed private tour
- Travel insurance
Recommended Answer:
- Convenience Product: Low involvement, readily available.
- Shopping Product: Requires comparison and evaluation.
- Specialty Product: Unique, high involvement.
- Unsought Product: Purchased only when need arises.
Exercise 4: Brand Elements
Task: Analyze the brand elements for Parks Canada, identifying three visual design elements and three intangible elements that contribute to their brand strength.
Recommended Answer:
- Visual Design Elements:
- Iconic beaver logo representing Canadian heritage
- Green and white color scheme reflecting nature and environmental stewardship
- Consistent signage and wayfinding design across all national parks
- Intangible Elements:
- Reputation for conservation and environmental protection
- Emotional connection to Canadian wilderness and natural heritage
- Trust in safety and quality of park maintenance and services
Exercise 5: Branding Strategy
Task: Identify whether each scenario represents a “branded house” or “house of brands” strategy:
- Marriott’s portfolio of hotel brands
- Virgin Group’s diverse businesses
- Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts
Recommended Answer:
- House of Brands: Multiple distinct brands under Marriott International.
- Branded House: Virgin name used across different industries.
- Branded House: Single brand name across all properties.
Exercise 6: Customer Experience Management
Scenario: You manage a large community recreation centre.
Task: Using the RATER framework, develop a strategy to enhance customer experience across all touchpoints.
Recommended Answer:
- Reliability:
- Consistent class schedules
- Well-maintained equipment
- Regular facility cleaning
- Dependable instructor attendance
- Assurance:
- Certified fitness instructors
- Clear safety protocols
- Professional staff training
- Regular equipment inspections
- Tangibles:
- Modern fitness equipment
- Clean, well-lit spaces
- Clear wayfinding signage
- Professional staff uniforms
- Empathy:
- Personalized fitness consultations
- Adaptive programming for different abilities
- Special consideration for seniors
- Family-friendly policies
- Responsiveness:
- Quick response to member feedback
- Efficient class registration system
- Prompt equipment maintenance
- Flexible scheduling options
Exercise 7: Multiple Choice Questions
Glossary of Key Terms
Adopter Categories: Classifications of consumers based on when they adopt new products, including innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.
Augmented Product: Additional services and benefits that enhance the product’s value, such as warranties, customer service, and delivery options.
Brand: A distinctive feature like a name, term, design, or symbol that identifies goods or services and represents a company’s reputation as perceived by the public.
Brand Awareness: The extent to which consumers are familiar with and recognize a brand, increasing the likelihood of consumers choosing the brand over competitors.
Brand Equity: The value a brand adds to a product or service beyond its functional attributes, derived from consumer perceptions, experiences, and associations.
Brand Image: The perception of attributes that consumers have of a brand, such as quality, reliability, and uniqueness.
Brand Loyalty: The tendency of consumers to consistently choose a specific brand over others, contributing to stable sales and brand advocacy.
Branded House: A branding strategy where a company uses a single master brand across all its products and services.
Convenience Products: Low-cost, frequently purchased items that require minimal effort for consumers to acquire.
Copyright: A type of intellectual property that provides legal protection, granting creators exclusive rights to their original works, such as literature, music, art, software, logos, and marketing materials.
Core Product: The fundamental benefit or value that the consumer receives from the product, addressing the primary need or problem the product solves.
Customer Experience Management (CEM): The process of improving service quality and customer satisfaction through cohesive brand interactions.
Gap Model of Service Quality: A framework that identifies gaps between customer expectations and perceptions of service quality.
House of Brands: A branding strategy where a company maintains separate and distinct brands for different products or services.
Inseparability: A characteristic of services where production and consumption occur simultaneously.
Intangibility: A characteristic of services where they cannot be seen, touched, or physically experienced before purchase.
Levels of a Product: A framework to understand the different layers of value a product offers to customers, including core, tangible, augmented, and promised benefits.
Perishability: A characteristic of services where they cannot be stored for later use.
Product: Anything that can be offered to a market that might satisfy a need, want, or demand — encompassing physical goods, services, experiences, and ideas.
Product Adoption Curve: A model showing how different consumer groups adopt new products over time.
Promised Product: The long-term benefits and experiences associated with the product, including brand reputation and customer satisfaction.
RATER Framework: A tool for measuring service quality through Reliability, Assurance, Tangibles, Empathy, and Responsiveness.
Service Profit Chain: A model linking employee satisfaction to customer satisfaction and ultimately to profitability.
Services Marketing Triangle: A framework showing the relationships between company, employees, and customers in service delivery.
Shopping Products: Products purchased less frequently that involve more planning and comparison.
Specialty Products: Unique items that consumers specifically seek out and are willing to make a special effort to purchase.
Tangible Product: The physical attributes and features of the product that can be seen, touched, or measured.
Trademark: Is a type of intellectual property providing legal protection for brand names, symbols, and other distinctive brand elements. It includes any word, name, symbol, or design to distinguish the goods or services of one organization from those of others.
Types of Consumer Products: Classification of products based on consumer buying behavior, including convenience, shopping, specialty, and unsought products.
Unsought Products: Products that consumers do not actively seek out until a specific need arises.
Variability: A characteristic of services where quality can vary depending on who provides them, when, and where.
