Deck 11: Product Concepts, Branding and Packaging

Question 1

Wyndham Hotels Portfolio of Brands Satisfies Diverse Customer Needs
Wyndham Worldwide is a global provider of hotels and travel-related services. Its more than 7,200 franchised hotels include Wyndham Grand Collection, Days Inn, Howard Johnson, Wingate at Wyndham, Super 8, Ramada, and Planet Hollywood. While the core product, a place to stay, is virtually the same no matter the hotel, the supplemental and experiential benefits of its hotel chains differ. Wyndham has worked to ensure that each hotel chain maintains its own unique feel to appeal to the appropriate target market.
In many ways, Wyndham's wide range of hotels benefits the company by allowing it to target both budget-conscious consumers and vacationers willing to spend extra money for the resort experience. However, the company must always be careful to market these hotels consistently. For some time, people viewed Wyndham hotels as inconsistent in the quality of services and benefits. The Wyndham CEO believed that past marketing initiatives conflicted with one another to muddle the company's brand identity.
To rectify the problem, Wyndham redesigned some of its hotels and sought to create a solid identity for each hotel chain that would capture the feel of the chain's history and purpose. For instance, the Howard Johnson hotel chain's longer history prompted Wyndham to create an "iconic" atmosphere for these hotels that target leisure travelers and families. The experiential benefits of the Howard Johnson chain therefore include a family-friendly environment and the ability to stay in a classic hotel at a reasonable price.
On the other hand, Wyndham's more upscale hotel chains offer a completely different experience. Its Night Hotel in New York City claims to be "for the traveler who revels in all things after dark." The hotel tries to imbue a "sexy" feel with a chic eatery and bar as well as dark-colored furnishings. Wyndham's TRYP hotels are located in some of the world's biggest cities in Europe, South America, and North America. The hotels are designed to fi t in with the local environment and, thus, range from modernistic to historical designs. The hotels are meant to be an extension of the city in which they are located, enabling visitors to experience the excitement of the city even before leaving the hotel's doors.
The hotel product is far from complete without the numerous supplemental benefits that accompany the core product. Travelers have their own expectations of supplemental items that hotels should offer, ranging from intangible items like friendly service to tangible products, such as ample towels and toiletries, pillows, and television. Hotels that do not meet these expectations tend to receive bad reviews and are often shunned by even budget-conscious families. Hotels that go above and beyond these expectations, however, manage to obtain an advantage over their competitors.
Wyndham offers a range of supplemental goods and services to its guests, from discounted hotel packages to large meeting rooms for company conferences. Many Wyndham hotel chains offer their own unique supplemental benefits as well. Wyndham Gardens offers library lounges for customer comfort, while the more economical Knight's Inn provides a free continental breakfast. Wyndham also provides a reward program for customers that frequently stay at Wyndham hotels. Customers who receive enough points for staying at Wyndham hotels can receive extra days for free. Another program, Wyndham's By-Request, awards members with free Internet access, expedited check-in, and-after three nights-a snack and drink, extra items like pillows, and the option to have the room personalized to the customer's preferences. Wyndham also rewards female business travelers with its Women on Their Way program. The program's website offers advice and special packages for businesswomen planning their trips.
Wyndham's hotel chains are at different levels of the life cycle. Its Night and TRYP hotel chains, for example, are in the introductory and growth stages, while its Howard Johnson hotel chains are likely in the maturity phase. As a result, Wyndham is more likely to engage in heavy marketing to spread awareness of its newer brands. However, the company is not neglecting its more mature brands. It has worked hard to portray Howard Johnson as an iconic brand and continues to offer benefits packages to encourage families to stay at the chain. The company makes sure to adjust its marketing strategies to suit both the product's benefits and its stage in the product life cycle.
Wyndham has achieved great success in creating a successful product mix to meet the needs of different customers. The company's ability to adapt its marketing strategies to suit its various chains has provided it with unique advantages that make it a formidable competitor to rival hotel companies.
How is Wyndham using symbolic and experiential benefits to target its hotels to certain groups of travelers?

Answer 1

WH is a leading chain of world class hotels. The company offers distinct experiential benefits to its various segments of customers.
Experiential benefits enhance the satisfaction level by making the shopping experience memorable for the customer. Such factors include personalization, luxurious experience offered at the showroom, made-to-order product to match the product with the customer's personality, etc.
For example; a high end wrist watch brand offers coffee lounge, designer furniture and interiors of the showroom, a personalized service card to its customers. The customer may also receive greetings on special days like birthday or anniversary to enhance customer experience with the brand.
Following below are the different experiential benefits offered to different segments by WH:
• Economy hotels of WH offer 'family-friendly environment, and a classic hotel at a reasonable price' benefits to travelers and families. This offers routine travelers to have a classic hotel experience at an affordable price.
• The upscale hotels of WH in New York offer sensual feel in the entire hotel and rooms to serve young and upscale customers. This offers an elite, prestigious and sexy feel inside the hotel and being treated to chic eateries and surroundings.
• In big cities, the hotel ensures to match up with the local environment by adding modern and historical designs inside the hotel. This helps the customer have the feel of city inside the hotel as well.
Thus, WH maintains a balance of varied symbolic and experiential offerings to its customers.

Question 2

Is a personal computer sold at a retail store a consumer product or a business product? Defend your answer.

Answer 2

A personal computer sold at a retail store is a consumer product than a business product as the product is a personal computer which will be used for personal purpose of the buyer.
This product is not a business product as the computer is not purchased for meeting the objectives of the organizations.

Question 3

Identifying the needs of consumer groups and developing products that satisfy those needs are essential when creating a marketing strategy. Successful product development begins with a clear understanding of fundamental product concepts. The product concept is the basis on which many of the marketing plan decisions are made. When relating the information in this chapter to the development of your marketing plan, consider the following:
Using Figure 11.2 as a guide, create a matrix of the current product mix for your company.

The information obtained from these questions should assist you in developing various aspects of your marketing plan found in the "Interactive Marketing Plan" exercise at www.cengagebrain.com.

Answer 3

On the basis of the concepts of product mix width and depth applied to U.S P n G products (figure 11.2), following is the product mix of a smaller company owned by any individual:

Question 4

GaGa: Not Just a Lady
Several years before Lady Gaga made her musical debut, Jim King started a company he named GaGa after his beloved grandmother. King, a Rhode Island television news anchor turned entrepreneur, planned to use his grandmother's recipe for frozen dessert as the basis of his first product. Because the lemony dessert contains more butterfat than sherbet and less butterfat than ice cream, he couldn't legally label it as either. So King came up with the idea of calling the product "SherBetter," using the word play to suggest that it's similar to sherbet, but better.
King wasn't intending to compete with major ice cream firms like Hood, Breyers, and Ben Jerry's. First, as a tiny start-up business, GaGa couldn't begin to match the marketing resources of the national brands. Second, GaGa's focus would be much narrower than the big brands, because sherbets and sorbets make up only a tiny fraction of the overall market for ice cream products. King determined that GaGa would compete on the basis of high quality, all-natural ingredients, and a fresh, creamy taste. He coined the slogan "Smooth as ice cream, fresh like sherbet" to describe SherBetter's appeal.
After he cooked up batches of SherBetter in his home kitchen, King drove from grocery store to grocery store until he made a sale to his first retail customer, Munroe Dairy. This initial order for 500 pints of lemon SherBetter was enough to get GaGa off to a solid start. During the first four years of business, the company marketed only one product-the original lemon SherBetter in pint containers. In that time, Stefani Germanotta shot to fame under the stage name of Lady Gaga, giving GaGa's frozen desserts an unexpected but welcome boost in brand awareness and sales.
Four years after founding GaGa, King realized that he could increase sales and increase his brand's visibility in supermarket frozen-food cases by expanding with sufficient products to fill a shelf. Over the next four years, he introduced raspberry, orange, and several other new flavors of SherBetter packed in pint containers. He also launched a line of frozen dessert novelty bars, called "SherBetter on a stick" because they're shaped like ice-cream bars. In addition, he decided to develop a tropical flavor to enhance his product offerings. That led to the introduction of toasted coconut SherBetter, a flavor that tested very well during GaGa's research. As he gained experience, King learned to account for cannibalization of existing products when he launched new products, knowing that overall sales would gain over time.
However, King didn't anticipate that supermarkets would display SherBetter pints and bars in separate freezer sections several doors away from each other. This complicated GaGa's marketing effort, because customers might not know they could buy SherBetter in both bars and pints unless they looked in both frozen-food sections. GaGa simply couldn't afford advertising to promote bars and pints. Instead, King and his wife Michelle, who serves as marketing director, began setting up a table outside the frozen-foods case in different supermarkets and distributing free samples on weekends. They found that when they offered samples, customers responded positively and the store sold a lot of GaGa products that day. This opened the door to repeat purchasing and brand loyalty.
One lesson King learned is that the GaGa brand is more memorable than the SherBetter product name. As a result, he changed the product packaging to emphasize the GaGa brand and its playful implications. After hiring professionals to analyze the company's marketing activities, he also learned that he should focus on what makes GaGa's products unique rather than trying to fit into the broader ice cream product category. The basics of high quality, a unique recipe, and a fun brand have helped King acquire distribution in 1,500 supermarkets and grocery stores throughout the Eastern United States.

Questions for Discussion
When GaGa began adding novelty bars in new flavors, what was the effect on the width and depth of its product mix?

Question 5

Wyndham Hotels Portfolio of Brands Satisfies Diverse Customer Needs
Wyndham Worldwide is a global provider of hotels and travel-related services. Its more than 7,200 franchised hotels include Wyndham Grand Collection, Days Inn, Howard Johnson, Wingate at Wyndham, Super 8, Ramada, and Planet Hollywood. While the core product, a place to stay, is virtually the same no matter the hotel, the supplemental and experiential benefits of its hotel chains differ. Wyndham has worked to ensure that each hotel chain maintains its own unique feel to appeal to the appropriate target market.
In many ways, Wyndham's wide range of hotels benefits the company by allowing it to target both budget-conscious consumers and vacationers willing to spend extra money for the resort experience. However, the company must always be careful to market these hotels consistently. For some time, people viewed Wyndham hotels as inconsistent in the quality of services and benefits. The Wyndham CEO believed that past marketing initiatives conflicted with one another to muddle the company's brand identity.
To rectify the problem, Wyndham redesigned some of its hotels and sought to create a solid identity for each hotel chain that would capture the feel of the chain's history and purpose. For instance, the Howard Johnson hotel chain's longer history prompted Wyndham to create an "iconic" atmosphere for these hotels that target leisure travelers and families. The experiential benefits of the Howard Johnson chain therefore include a family-friendly environment and the ability to stay in a classic hotel at a reasonable price.
On the other hand, Wyndham's more upscale hotel chains offer a completely different experience. Its Night Hotel in New York City claims to be "for the traveler who revels in all things after dark." The hotel tries to imbue a "sexy" feel with a chic eatery and bar as well as dark-colored furnishings. Wyndham's TRYP hotels are located in some of the world's biggest cities in Europe, South America, and North America. The hotels are designed to fi t in with the local environment and, thus, range from modernistic to historical designs. The hotels are meant to be an extension of the city in which they are located, enabling visitors to experience the excitement of the city even before leaving the hotel's doors.
The hotel product is far from complete without the numerous supplemental benefits that accompany the core product. Travelers have their own expectations of supplemental items that hotels should offer, ranging from intangible items like friendly service to tangible products, such as ample towels and toiletries, pillows, and television. Hotels that do not meet these expectations tend to receive bad reviews and are often shunned by even budget-conscious families. Hotels that go above and beyond these expectations, however, manage to obtain an advantage over their competitors.
Wyndham offers a range of supplemental goods and services to its guests, from discounted hotel packages to large meeting rooms for company conferences. Many Wyndham hotel chains offer their own unique supplemental benefits as well. Wyndham Gardens offers library lounges for customer comfort, while the more economical Knight's Inn provides a free continental breakfast. Wyndham also provides a reward program for customers that frequently stay at Wyndham hotels. Customers who receive enough points for staying at Wyndham hotels can receive extra days for free. Another program, Wyndham's By-Request, awards members with free Internet access, expedited check-in, and-after three nights-a snack and drink, extra items like pillows, and the option to have the room personalized to the customer's preferences. Wyndham also rewards female business travelers with its Women on Their Way program. The program's website offers advice and special packages for businesswomen planning their trips.
Wyndham's hotel chains are at different levels of the life cycle. Its Night and TRYP hotel chains, for example, are in the introductory and growth stages, while its Howard Johnson hotel chains are likely in the maturity phase. As a result, Wyndham is more likely to engage in heavy marketing to spread awareness of its newer brands. However, the company is not neglecting its more mature brands. It has worked hard to portray Howard Johnson as an iconic brand and continues to offer benefits packages to encourage families to stay at the chain. The company makes sure to adjust its marketing strategies to suit both the product's benefits and its stage in the product life cycle.
Wyndham has achieved great success in creating a successful product mix to meet the needs of different customers. The company's ability to adapt its marketing strategies to suit its various chains has provided it with unique advantages that make it a formidable competitor to rival hotel companies.
How is Wyndham using supplemental features at its hotels to create a competitive advantage?

Question 6

How do convenience products and shopping products differ? What are the distinguishing characteristics of each type of product?

Question 7

Identifying the needs of consumer groups and developing products that satisfy those needs are essential when creating a marketing strategy. Successful product development begins with a clear understanding of fundamental product concepts. The product concept is the basis on which many of the marketing plan decisions are made. When relating the information in this chapter to the development of your marketing plan, consider the following:
Discuss how the profitability of your product will change as it moves through each of the phases of the product life cycle.
The information obtained from these questions should assist you in developing various aspects of your marketing plan found in the "Interactive Marketing Plan" exercise at www.cengagebrain.com.

Question 8

GaGa: Not Just a Lady
Several years before Lady Gaga made her musical debut, Jim King started a company he named GaGa after his beloved grandmother. King, a Rhode Island television news anchor turned entrepreneur, planned to use his grandmother's recipe for frozen dessert as the basis of his first product. Because the lemony dessert contains more butterfat than sherbet and less butterfat than ice cream, he couldn't legally label it as either. So King came up with the idea of calling the product "SherBetter," using the word play to suggest that it's similar to sherbet, but better.
King wasn't intending to compete with major ice cream firms like Hood, Breyers, and Ben Jerry's. First, as a tiny start-up business, GaGa couldn't begin to match the marketing resources of the national brands. Second, GaGa's focus would be much narrower than the big brands, because sherbets and sorbets make up only a tiny fraction of the overall market for ice cream products. King determined that GaGa would compete on the basis of high quality, all-natural ingredients, and a fresh, creamy taste. He coined the slogan "Smooth as ice cream, fresh like sherbet" to describe SherBetter's appeal.
After he cooked up batches of SherBetter in his home kitchen, King drove from grocery store to grocery store until he made a sale to his first retail customer, Munroe Dairy. This initial order for 500 pints of lemon SherBetter was enough to get GaGa off to a solid start. During the first four years of business, the company marketed only one product-the original lemon SherBetter in pint containers. In that time, Stefani Germanotta shot to fame under the stage name of Lady Gaga, giving GaGa's frozen desserts an unexpected but welcome boost in brand awareness and sales.
Four years after founding GaGa, King realized that he could increase sales and increase his brand's visibility in supermarket frozen-food cases by expanding with sufficient products to fill a shelf. Over the next four years, he introduced raspberry, orange, and several other new flavors of SherBetter packed in pint containers. He also launched a line of frozen dessert novelty bars, called "SherBetter on a stick" because they're shaped like ice-cream bars. In addition, he decided to develop a tropical flavor to enhance his product offerings. That led to the introduction of toasted coconut SherBetter, a flavor that tested very well during GaGa's research. As he gained experience, King learned to account for cannibalization of existing products when he launched new products, knowing that overall sales would gain over time.
However, King didn't anticipate that supermarkets would display SherBetter pints and bars in separate freezer sections several doors away from each other. This complicated GaGa's marketing effort, because customers might not know they could buy SherBetter in both bars and pints unless they looked in both frozen-food sections. GaGa simply couldn't afford advertising to promote bars and pints. Instead, King and his wife Michelle, who serves as marketing director, began setting up a table outside the frozen-foods case in different supermarkets and distributing free samples on weekends. They found that when they offered samples, customers responded positively and the store sold a lot of GaGa products that day. This opened the door to repeat purchasing and brand loyalty.
One lesson King learned is that the GaGa brand is more memorable than the SherBetter product name. As a result, he changed the product packaging to emphasize the GaGa brand and its playful implications. After hiring professionals to analyze the company's marketing activities, he also learned that he should focus on what makes GaGa's products unique rather than trying to fit into the broader ice cream product category. The basics of high quality, a unique recipe, and a fun brand have helped King acquire distribution in 1,500 supermarkets and grocery stores throughout the Eastern United States.

Questions for Discussion
Why is packaging particularly important for a company like GaGa, which can't afford advertising?

Question 9

Wyndham Hotels Portfolio of Brands Satisfies Diverse Customer Needs
Wyndham Worldwide is a global provider of hotels and travel-related services. Its more than 7,200 franchised hotels include Wyndham Grand Collection, Days Inn, Howard Johnson, Wingate at Wyndham, Super 8, Ramada, and Planet Hollywood. While the core product, a place to stay, is virtually the same no matter the hotel, the supplemental and experiential benefits of its hotel chains differ. Wyndham has worked to ensure that each hotel chain maintains its own unique feel to appeal to the appropriate target market.
In many ways, Wyndham's wide range of hotels benefits the company by allowing it to target both budget-conscious consumers and vacationers willing to spend extra money for the resort experience. However, the company must always be careful to market these hotels consistently. For some time, people viewed Wyndham hotels as inconsistent in the quality of services and benefits. The Wyndham CEO believed that past marketing initiatives conflicted with one another to muddle the company's brand identity.
To rectify the problem, Wyndham redesigned some of its hotels and sought to create a solid identity for each hotel chain that would capture the feel of the chain's history and purpose. For instance, the Howard Johnson hotel chain's longer history prompted Wyndham to create an "iconic" atmosphere for these hotels that target leisure travelers and families. The experiential benefits of the Howard Johnson chain therefore include a family-friendly environment and the ability to stay in a classic hotel at a reasonable price.
On the other hand, Wyndham's more upscale hotel chains offer a completely different experience. Its Night Hotel in New York City claims to be "for the traveler who revels in all things after dark." The hotel tries to imbue a "sexy" feel with a chic eatery and bar as well as dark-colored furnishings. Wyndham's TRYP hotels are located in some of the world's biggest cities in Europe, South America, and North America. The hotels are designed to fi t in with the local environment and, thus, range from modernistic to historical designs. The hotels are meant to be an extension of the city in which they are located, enabling visitors to experience the excitement of the city even before leaving the hotel's doors.
The hotel product is far from complete without the numerous supplemental benefits that accompany the core product. Travelers have their own expectations of supplemental items that hotels should offer, ranging from intangible items like friendly service to tangible products, such as ample towels and toiletries, pillows, and television. Hotels that do not meet these expectations tend to receive bad reviews and are often shunned by even budget-conscious families. Hotels that go above and beyond these expectations, however, manage to obtain an advantage over their competitors.
Wyndham offers a range of supplemental goods and services to its guests, from discounted hotel packages to large meeting rooms for company conferences. Many Wyndham hotel chains offer their own unique supplemental benefits as well. Wyndham Gardens offers library lounges for customer comfort, while the more economical Knight's Inn provides a free continental breakfast. Wyndham also provides a reward program for customers that frequently stay at Wyndham hotels. Customers who receive enough points for staying at Wyndham hotels can receive extra days for free. Another program, Wyndham's By-Request, awards members with free Internet access, expedited check-in, and-after three nights-a snack and drink, extra items like pillows, and the option to have the room personalized to the customer's preferences. Wyndham also rewards female business travelers with its Women on Their Way program. The program's website offers advice and special packages for businesswomen planning their trips.
Wyndham's hotel chains are at different levels of the life cycle. Its Night and TRYP hotel chains, for example, are in the introductory and growth stages, while its Howard Johnson hotel chains are likely in the maturity phase. As a result, Wyndham is more likely to engage in heavy marketing to spread awareness of its newer brands. However, the company is not neglecting its more mature brands. It has worked hard to portray Howard Johnson as an iconic brand and continues to offer benefits packages to encourage families to stay at the chain. The company makes sure to adjust its marketing strategies to suit both the product's benefits and its stage in the product life cycle.
Wyndham has achieved great success in creating a successful product mix to meet the needs of different customers. The company's ability to adapt its marketing strategies to suit its various chains has provided it with unique advantages that make it a formidable competitor to rival hotel companies.
How should Wyndham market its hotels according to their stages in the product life cycle?

Question 10

How does an organization's product mix relate to its development of a product line? When should an enterprise add depth to its product lines rather than width to its product mix?

Question 11

Identifying the needs of consumer groups and developing products that satisfy those needs are essential when creating a marketing strategy. Successful product development begins with a clear understanding of fundamental product concepts. The product concept is the basis on which many of the marketing plan decisions are made. When relating the information in this chapter to the development of your marketing plan, consider the following:
Create a brief profile of the type of consumer who is likely to represent each of the product adopter categories for your product.
The information obtained from these questions should assist you in developing various aspects of your marketing plan found in the "Interactive Marketing Plan" exercise at www.cengagebrain.com.

Question 12

GaGa: Not Just a Lady
Several years before Lady Gaga made her musical debut, Jim King started a company he named GaGa after his beloved grandmother. King, a Rhode Island television news anchor turned entrepreneur, planned to use his grandmother's recipe for frozen dessert as the basis of his first product. Because the lemony dessert contains more butterfat than sherbet and less butterfat than ice cream, he couldn't legally label it as either. So King came up with the idea of calling the product "SherBetter," using the word play to suggest that it's similar to sherbet, but better.
King wasn't intending to compete with major ice cream firms like Hood, Breyers, and Ben Jerry's. First, as a tiny start-up business, GaGa couldn't begin to match the marketing resources of the national brands. Second, GaGa's focus would be much narrower than the big brands, because sherbets and sorbets make up only a tiny fraction of the overall market for ice cream products. King determined that GaGa would compete on the basis of high quality, all-natural ingredients, and a fresh, creamy taste. He coined the slogan "Smooth as ice cream, fresh like sherbet" to describe SherBetter's appeal.
After he cooked up batches of SherBetter in his home kitchen, King drove from grocery store to grocery store until he made a sale to his first retail customer, Munroe Dairy. This initial order for 500 pints of lemon SherBetter was enough to get GaGa off to a solid start. During the first four years of business, the company marketed only one product-the original lemon SherBetter in pint containers. In that time, Stefani Germanotta shot to fame under the stage name of Lady Gaga, giving GaGa's frozen desserts an unexpected but welcome boost in brand awareness and sales.
Four years after founding GaGa, King realized that he could increase sales and increase his brand's visibility in supermarket frozen-food cases by expanding with sufficient products to fill a shelf. Over the next four years, he introduced raspberry, orange, and several other new flavors of SherBetter packed in pint containers. He also launched a line of frozen dessert novelty bars, called "SherBetter on a stick" because they're shaped like ice-cream bars. In addition, he decided to develop a tropical flavor to enhance his product offerings. That led to the introduction of toasted coconut SherBetter, a flavor that tested very well during GaGa's research. As he gained experience, King learned to account for cannibalization of existing products when he launched new products, knowing that overall sales would gain over time.
However, King didn't anticipate that supermarkets would display SherBetter pints and bars in separate freezer sections several doors away from each other. This complicated GaGa's marketing effort, because customers might not know they could buy SherBetter in both bars and pints unless they looked in both frozen-food sections. GaGa simply couldn't afford advertising to promote bars and pints. Instead, King and his wife Michelle, who serves as marketing director, began setting up a table outside the frozen-foods case in different supermarkets and distributing free samples on weekends. They found that when they offered samples, customers responded positively and the store sold a lot of GaGa products that day. This opened the door to repeat purchasing and brand loyalty.
One lesson King learned is that the GaGa brand is more memorable than the SherBetter product name. As a result, he changed the product packaging to emphasize the GaGa brand and its playful implications. After hiring professionals to analyze the company's marketing activities, he also learned that he should focus on what makes GaGa's products unique rather than trying to fit into the broader ice cream product category. The basics of high quality, a unique recipe, and a fun brand have helped King acquire distribution in 1,500 supermarkets and grocery stores throughout the Eastern United States.

Questions for Discussion
Do you think GaGa's SherBetter pints and bars are likely to follow the product life cycle of traditional ice cream products? Explain your answer.

Question 13

How do industry profits change as a product moves through the four stages of its life cycle?

Question 14

Identifying the needs of consumer groups and developing products that satisfy those needs are essential when creating a marketing strategy. Successful product development begins with a clear understanding of fundamental product concepts. The product concept is the basis on which many of the marketing plan decisions are made. When relating the information in this chapter to the development of your marketing plan, consider the following:
Discuss the factors that could contribute to the failure of your product. How will you define product failure?
The information obtained from these questions should assist you in developing various aspects of your marketing plan found in the "Interactive Marketing Plan" exercise at www.cengagebrain.com.

Question 15

What are the stages in the product adoption process, and how do they affect the commercialization phase?

Question 16

How does branding benefit consumers and marketers?

Question 17

What is brand equity? Identify and explain the major elements of brand equity.

Question 18

What are the three major degrees of brand loyalty?

Question 19

Compare and contrast manufacturer brands, private distributor brands, and generic brands.

Question 20

Identify the factors a marketer should consider in selecting a brand name.

Question 21

What is co-branding? What major issues should be considered when using co-branding?

Question 22

Describe the functions a package can perform. Which function is most important? Why?

Question 23

What are the main factors a marketer should consider when developing a package?

Question 24

In what ways can packaging be used as a strategic tool?

Question 25

What are the major functions of labeling?