What is a Product? Explain Product Mix and Product Line.

From a marketing perspective, a buyer buys to satisfy a need, and benefit from it. Product is anything that is offered to satisfy or benefit a buyer with needs and wants which can be tangible as well as intangible. Products which are marketed include goods, services, events, people, ideas, information, places, properties and organisations. For a brief information on each of these, please refer sub-topic – Market, under topic Marketing Concepts.

Product – a product can have a tangible as well as intangible attribute or both. It is something of value to buyers and consumers which an organisation offers (hence sometimes referred as an offering). For example, the food we eat in a restaurant is a tangible product and the service from the staff there is an intangible product. A service offered by an insurance company, a Chartered Accountant are intangible products.

A product is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy a need, want or demand. The product is a result of strategic decisions at the corporate level which has characteristics or attributes that a buyer wants. The quality, branding, packaging, labelling, and developing right warrantees, guarantees are part of the entire bundle of the product that an organisation offers.Product includes all the services, both before and after its sale. It carries with it a “satisfaction factor” that is tangible as well as intangible like utility and psychological satisfaction of owning the product.

Definitions –

Product is anything that is potentially valued by a target market for the benefits and satisfactions it provides, including objects, services, organisations, places, people, and ideas– Cravens, Hills and Woodruff.

A product is sum total of three things- the intrinsic characteristics, its materials and construction, its ability to perform; the extrinsic characteristics, packaging, brand or trade mark; and the intangibles associated with it – Prof. Harry L. Hanson.

Another acceptable definition is Products are offerings designed to deliver value to customers to fulfill needs or satisfy wants.

Product line – Product Line refers to a group of products that function in a similar manner, sold to the same customer groups via same distribution channels and fall within the same price range.

Product Mix – Product mix is the entire collection or assortment of products or product lines offered by an organisation.

Product Line is a group of products that are related to each other in some way. They fall within the same price range, fulfill the same customer need, serve the same target market and have similar distribution channels. For example, different sports shoes from Adidas, Life insurance policies. It is a group of related offerings. Marketers face many decisions for product line strategies. One of the major decision involves Product line length. Product Line length refers to the number of items in a product line. As the organisation adds items, several costs increase like production costs, promotion costs, technology costs, designing costs, etc. The firm can increase profits by adding items to a short product line, and it can also drop items to increase profits if the Product line is too long.

A product line can be Broad like in case of a Knorr’s soups, Nestle’s Maggie noodles line which has many flavours, or it can be Narrow like in case of Apple iPod line which offers few Mp3 devices. The broadness or narrowness of a product line is referred to as Line Depth. When a new product is added to the line it is called as Line extension. For example, new models introduced by Samsung for its Galaxy S series – S2, S3, and so on.

Companies also offer many different product lines. For example, Samsung offers smartphones, Television sets, Refrigerators, External Hard drives, etc. as part of its different product lines. And all the sets or assortments of products that a company offers for sale is called Product Mix.

Product Mix width is the number of product lines a firm carries. Product Mix Length is the total number of items in the mix. Product Mix depth refers to the variants (broadness and narrowness) of a product in Product line.Product Mix consistency refers to the closeness of different product lines basis end use, production, promotion, distribution, etc. For example, Dabur, Hindustan liver, P & G offer different products that go through the same distribution channels but differ in end use. (This discussion is partially based on Prof. Kotler’s, Marketing Management, 11th edition, Setting the product and branding strategy.)