If you buy a bicycle to walk instead of walking, you buy a hamburger to satisfy your hunger, and you buy cosmetics in the hope of beauty, temperament and charm. Therefore, when developing and promoting products, enterprises should clearly determine the benefits that products can provide to make products attractive. Tangible products are the form of core products, that is, the image of entities and services provided to the market. If tangible products are physical objects, they usually show the product quality level, appearance characteristics, style, brand name, packaging and so on in the market. The basic utility of products must be realized through some specific forms. Marketers should first pay attention to the interests pursued by customers when buying products, so as to meet customers' needs more perfectly, and then seek the form of realizing interests and design products from this angle.
The tangible features of products mainly refer to quality, style, characteristics and packaging. Such as refrigerators, tangible products not only refer to the refrigeration function of refrigerators, but also include their quality, shape, color, capacity and so on. Additional products are all the additional services and benefits that customers get when they buy tangible products, including providing credit, free delivery, guarantee, installation and after-sales service. The concept of additional products comes from an in-depth understanding of market demand. Because the purpose of buyers is to meet a certain demand, they hope to get everything related to meeting that demand.
Theodore levitt, an American scholar, once pointed out: "The new competition does not occur in what products are produced by companies' factories, but in what additional benefits their products can provide (such as packaging, services, advertising, customer consultation, financing, delivery, warehousing and other forms of value)". Qingdao TV Factory can remain unbeaten in the fierce market competition, and its products have entered more than 5 million households nationwide, relying on warm and thoughtful after-sales service. By April of 1993, the factory had set up 236 maintenance outlets all over the country, providing the best additional products to the market with the best maintenance and testing equipment, the most advanced communication and transportation tools, the best technicians and the best technical services.
Because the consumption of products is a continuous process, we should not only publicize the products before sale, but also play a lasting and stable role after sale. Therefore, service is indispensable. It can be predicted that with the fierce market competition and the continuous improvement of users' requirements, additional products are increasingly becoming an important means to win the competition. This is a product strategy based on the idea of changing the overall product elements. The demand in the international market is very different from that in the domestic market, and many products must be changed in some ways to meet the demand in the international market. Of course, which part of the whole product and how to change it depend on the international market situation, which is why this strategy shows high flexibility in the "personalization" of the product in the changeable international market. General product changes focus on the following five aspects:
Functional changes. This is a product change that can provide more benefits for consumers. Such as air-conditioned cars.
Changes in appearance. This is mainly to change the color of the style. The reason for the change is because of the special conditions and different cultural environments in the countries where the products are used. Such as the size of kitchen utensils, the color and style of clothes.
Changes in packaging. The change of packaging is directly related to the natural conditions of the place of sale and the transportation distance between the two places, but international marketing places special emphasis on packaging, because the customs and consumption levels of the consuming countries are more important.
Changes in trademarks, brands and labels. In addition to different cultural requirements, the laws of consumer countries also stipulate changes in this regard. For example, Canada requires that trademarks must be written in English and French. From the marketing point of view, the design of trademark image must be artistic and attractive, and echo with personalized packaging and products.
Changes in services. Do a good job in product service (such as warranty, spare parts supply, etc.). ) is very important to ensure product sales. As a part of the whole product, good service can enhance users' purchasing confidence, improve product reputation, open the market and expand sales. This is a product development strategy oriented to market opportunities. This strategy requires international marketers to set up an "omni-directional antenna", just like the antenna of a radar rotates 360 degrees in the sky. In the case of reflected waves in any direction, the potential market of products in the surrounding environment can be determined, and then products can be provided accordingly. There are five main forms of this strategy:
Create new products and create new trends.
Provide products according to or create new consumption forms.
Find out the products and markets that are neglected or poorly served by foreign companies and provide products.
Seize the opportunity of changing consumption characteristics and provide products.
Study competitors' products and then provide your own products. After new products are produced according to strict management procedures and enter the market, enterprises will not make minor changes to this product project, but will accumulate improved thinking methods and apply them to the design of the next generation of new products.
At present, the life cycle of products has been greatly shortened. The newly developed products in the United States will withdraw from the market in 2 ~ 3 years, and some products in China will lose their original market position in 3 ~ 5 years. Therefore, in the shortened product life cycle, it is extremely important for enterprises to maintain the relative stability of products. From the consumer's point of view, a newly listed product, announced by the enterprise management that the product has been improved, will leave the impression of immature design and unreliable quality among customers, and people will wait for the comprehensive improvement of the product. For enterprises, frequent changes to some parts of products will increase the production and management costs of enterprises, bring trouble to the production department, and even have to withdraw from the market before the enterprise has recovered its costs and reasonable profits. Not only that, enterprises will also delay the development of the next generation of new products because they are too distracted at ordinary times. Obviously, under the new situation, it is very wise for enterprises to give up trivial or flashy small changes and concentrate on big changes. Using this strategy is not only beneficial to enterprises, but also beneficial to consumers. This new product strategy does not advocate the development of ordinary popular products. This strategy can not only design and put into production new products in time to meet the needs of emerging markets, but also fully reflect the viewpoint of market segmentation. General products are produced in large batches, with few varieties and large market, which is convenient for enterprises to produce, but their adaptability is poor. Once eliminated in the competition, they will suffer huge losses. Therefore, under the condition of new technological revolution, it has become a trend to shift from general products to special products internationally.
At present, there are many generalized products in China, which is a phenomenon corresponding to the actual economic level and consumption level of China, but some popular products have begun to lose market. Quite simply, this product is too difficult to meet the demand, forcing consumers. Over time, customers with improved consumption and customers with different demand preferences will demand some specialized products. Therefore, when some enterprises produce general products, they should think about developing specialized products. Some new enterprises should focus on specialized products from the beginning. This is a strategy for enterprises to focus on developing new products just developed by an enterprise. In modern society, due to the establishment of market information system and various information networks, it is not difficult for advanced manufacturers to make great efforts to learn new products. Therefore, the advanced may not be very successful, but the followers benefit a lot. Followers can save a lot of research expenses, shorten the development time, keep up with the advanced level in time, and even surpass the founder.
Take Sony Corporation of Japan as an example, it ranks among the best in the world in household appliances. However, due to fierce competition, its new products are often popularized quickly, so the benefits are getting less and less. Take the video recorder as an example. 1983, its profit dropped sharply. However, the famous IBM is a successful follower. It is a latecomer in two important products: CPU and microcomputer. This situation can make backward enterprises focus on imitation, introduction and learning, rather than the most advanced products.