Creating and Promoting Products

Lesson 9
Creating and Promoting Products

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Introduction: Connecting Your Learning

You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

Steve Jobs
In the previous lesson, you learned that the marketing mix consists of four elements: product, price, place (distribution), and promotion. This lesson sharpens the focus on two of those elements: product and promotion. Most people are very familiar with these topics. People use products and services every day and are quite aware of promotional activities, which are all around. However, you may not be aware of how businesses decide what products to make—or services to provide—and how to promote them so that other businesses or consumers will want to buy them.

This simple commercial promotes a product for storing food. As you watch Example – Product Promotion (1:11), think about the range of players involved in creating and promoting this product.
An inventor came up with the push-button, vacuum seal lid. Perhaps a designer selected the colors for the container and lid. Others decided this product could successfully compete with products made by Rubbermaid and Tupperware. Someone else determined that a television commercial would be a good way to promote the product. Another company probably created and produced the commercial (which, of course, is a product in its own right). Making these decisions and taking these actions depend on the type of product or service, what unmet or underserved customers’ needs or wants it fits, whether the product is new, how releasing it will affect the corporate brand, and many other aspects that this lesson will explore.

Readings, Resources, and Assignments
Required Textbook Readings
Chapter 12: “Product and Promotion: Creating and Communicating Value”

Multimedia Resources
Textbook companion Web site

Required Assignments
Quiz
Essays
HP Life Certificate: Marketing Benefits vs. Features

Check Prior Knowledge

Before you start this lesson, think about the questions below. These questions are meant to help you focus on the concepts that this lesson will introduce and apply them to your own job situation. You are not required to submit these to your instructor.

What stages do new products go through before they make it to the market?
How do companies know the right time to launch a product or service?
What options are available to promote products? How do companies decide which option(s) to use for a particular product?
Since the advent of the Internet, how has promotion changed, and how has it remained the same?
Beat the Clock
Log in to the textbook companion Web site and test your knowledge of the key concepts in the chapter by playing Beat the Clock under the Games link for Chapter 12.

Watch the video Promotion Services – Local Business Marketing (3:27) from a consulting company offering a service related to Internet promotion. The video asserts that local businesses must have an effective presence on the Internet to be successful. If you are looking for a product or service, do you go straight to an Internet search, rely on social media, look in the newspaper or yellow pages (do those still exist?), or turn to friends and family? How does your company find the products and services it needs?
Focusing Your Learning

Official Course Competencies

Describe in writing the marketing functions of promotion, selling, merchandising, distribution, producing goods, and producing services.
Lesson Objectives

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

Explain product and identify product classifications.
Explain innovation, product differentiation, product planning, and the product life cycle.
Analyze and explain promotion, promotional messaging, and integrated marketing communications.
Explain the promotional mix and the various promotional tools.
Key Terms

As you read your assignment for this lesson, pay close attention to the key terms and phrasesPDF listed throughout the chapter. These terms and concepts are important to your understanding of the information provided in the lesson.
Approaching the Objectives

Products: Goods and Services

People once associated the term product only with objects they could buy. In the context of marketing, as your textbook indicates, a product refers to “anything that an organization offers to satisfy consumer needs and wants, including both goods and services” (p. 192). There are pure goods and pure services, but many purchases have elements of both. For example, a smartphone contract includes the phone, a charger, and earpiece as the goods plus the cellular services that go with it. Exhibit 12.1 from page 194 in your textbook illustrates the continuum along which all products fall.

Exhibit 12.1

As you read about product characteristics and categories, keep in mind that these descriptors apply to both goods and services. There are consumer products and business products, each with subcategories that naturally lead to various marketing strategies. How an organization markets to consumers is very different from how it markets to a business. For example, how Nike markets to you as a consumer to get you to use their products is more focused on the benefits you get from the product. When companies market a business product, they must show their customers (other businesses) why their product is better for their company. It is a challenge either way, but the difference is that consumer products market to you and the benefit you receive, and business products market to businesses to show how the product can increase or improve their products or company operations.

Related groups of products within a company are called a product line, which can be a powerful way to entice a customer to buy more products along the same lines as something previously purchased. Product lines become associated with their companies, specifically a company’s brand. Do you find that you gravitate to the same brand over and over, and that you’re willing to pay more for your favorite brand? Your brand loyalty translates to real value for the company that owns the brand. This is called brand equity.

Watch Consumer Behavior (5:19 – instrumental only) for an illustration of a product line and branding concept from Corning. This video also brings to mind the topic of innovation.
Innovation and Product Development

Product development starts with innovation, which is the elusive, creative aspect of product development. Companies grow because they come up with new product ideas or clever variations on current products that spark the interest of their existing customers and new customers alike.

Watch Steven Johnson: Where Good Ideas Come From (18:17) to get one perspective of the genesis of innovation.
To view a transcript, go to the TedTalks Web site. Select the appropriate language from the drop-down menu.

How, then, does an innovative idea or invention become a viable product? On page 200, your textbook describes the product development process as a series of six stages.

Development Process

As you read about these steps, consider the importance of each to the ultimate success of the product. Once a new product is commercially ready, if successful, it will go through a natural progression known as the product life cycle. Note that each phase of the cycle has both revenue-generating and promotional implications.

Promotion

P. T. Barnum, Barnum & Bailey Circus promoter, once said, “Without promotion, something terrible happens…nothing!” In other words, products do not sell just because they exist. Potential customers must become aware of the product, have some motivation to buy it, and be reminded why they should buy more in the future! Companies accomplish this through coordinated promotional campaigns (see integrated marketing communication in your textbook) via promotional channels. The specific combination of these channels that a company uses to promote a product is called the “promotional mix.”

One well-established category of promotion is called sales promotion. One form of sales promotion is the promotional product, which can serve to introduce and remind potential customers of a good or service. Your textbook describes the wide range of channels; note that some have been around for decades, while others have emerged through the advent of the Internet and related digital technologies.

Watch Reach & Recall—How Promotional Products Compare (2:15 – instrumental only) for a brief summary of the value of promotional products.
A more recent form of promotion is called product placement, defined by your textbook as “the paid integration of branded products into movies, television, and other media” (p. 200). Watch Shameless Product Placement on TV (3:13) for a quick tour of some obvious examples of product placement, or read “Product Placement.”
Regardless of which promotional channels you choose and whether you’re promoting goods or services, some basic principles still apply. You can cultivate informed, motivated, and loyal customers with quality products; effective rational (also called logical) and emotional appeals; and consistent messages communicated using memorable images, phrases, and tunes.

Summarizing Your Learning

The following activities are meant to help you practice the concepts that you studied in this lesson and prepare you for the graded assignments. You are not required to submit them to your instructor.

Read Chapter 12 in the textbook.
Revisit the questions in the “Check Prior Knowledge” section above. Have your answers changed?
Visit the textbook companion Web site for Chapter 12 and take the Web Quiz, which you can access via Cases & Exercises.
Prepare for your final exam by taking the Graded Quizzes for Chapter 12—Basic Knowledge and Critical Thinking on the textbook companion Web site. The site will give you feedback but this will not actually count toward your grade in the class (even though the Web site calls them “graded quizzes”).
Assessing Your Learning

Graded Assessment

The following are required assignments for this lesson:

Complete the Lesson 9 Quiz worth 30 points.
Complete the Lesson 9 Essays worth 40 points.
Complete the Lesson 9 HP Certificate worth 20 points.
Quiz

The quiz consists of 5 true-false questions worth 2 points each and 10 multiple-choice questions worth 2 points each.
Lesson 9 Quiz

Essays

Each essay must include an introduction, a body, and a conclusion, and should address all parts of the question. Make sure to cite any sources you use. Proper citation format for a source includes the name(s) of the author(s), the title of the work, the date of the publication, and the page number if you directly quote the source.

Essay Questions

Select two of the questions below and answer in essay format.

Define product layers. Give examples for each layer.
What are the stages of the product life cycle? How and why do marketers change their strategies as the product moves from one stage to the next?
What is promotion? Name and describe two major types of emerging promotional tools and two traditional tools that might influence consumers to purchase products and services.
Explain the thought process behind successful market segmentation. Why is it important for a company to segment out their target market?
Submit the assignment, which is Lesson 9 Essays in the Gradebook.

HP Life Certificate

Using the Internet log into the HPLife e-Learning Online Training site.
If you have not already done so, create an account on the site using your Maricopa email address and a password.
Select Courses then access Marketing Benefits vs. Features. Note: You may need to select the “View All Courses” option to see the course.
Select Enroll and then complete the course.
After completion, you will be emailed a notification once the certificate is available to download.
Once available, download the certificate and upload using the link below.
Submit the assignment, which is Lesson 9 HP Life Certificate in the Gradebook.
Have You Met The Objectives For This Lesson?

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