Products

0 Consider the importance of brand recognition

0 Discuss the importance of researching a product concept

Lead-in
• Give three examples of brands to which you are loyal, i.e. which you
regularly buy without thinking aboutit. Why are you loyal to them?
• What products are there for which you are what marketers cali a brand-switcher,
i.e. you have no preference for or loyalty to a particular brand?
• Wh at products can you think of for which the na me of the brand is totally
un important, so that you don't even notice it?

Reading: Products and brands

Read the following text, and write a brief heading for each section.

brand name can be reinforced by distinctive

design and packaging.
A product IS anything that can be offered to a The key obJective of branding 1s to create a
market that might satisfy a want or need. This relationship of trust. Customers have an image of
means that services, leisure activities, people the brand in their mmds, combimng knowledge
jpoliticians, athletes. actors), places !holiday about the product and their expectatwns of
resorts) and orgamzatwns jhospitals, colleges, it. Sorne brands are seen as more than just
political parties) can also be considered as products or services: they successfully represent
products. customers' attitudes or feelings, e.g. Nike.
Most manufacturers divide their products into Starbucks, Apple Computer. The Body Shop, etc.
product !ines - groups of closely related products, By way of extensive advertismg. companies can
sold to the same customer groups, and marketed achieve brand recognitwn among the general
through the same outlets. Because customers' public, mcluding millions of people who are
needs and markets are constantly evolving, not even interested in the products. Branding is
and because different products are generally at used for B2B jBusiness-to-Business) marketing
different stages of their lite cycles, with growing, of materials and components, as well as for
stable or declining sales and profitabihty, consumer goods in B2C (Business-ta-Consumer)
compames are always looking to the future, and marketing.
re-evaluating their product mix.

3 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __
2
Sorne companies include their name in ali their
Most products offered for sale by retailers are products (corporate branding). e.g. Philips. Virgin,
branded. A brand is a name, or a symbol, or a Yamaha. Other companies do mdividual branding,
logo that distinguishes products and services and give each product its own brand name, so
from competing offerings, and makes consumers the company name is Jess well-known than its
remember the company, product or service. A brands jcompare the name Procter & Gambie with

60 Unit 11 Products
 Marketing

its mdividual brand names Pampers, Pringles, 4 •

Duracell and Gillette)
Sorne companies, such as the major The brand consultancy Interbrand publishes
producers of soap powders, have a multi-brand an annual list of the Best Global Brands, which
strategy wh1ch allows them to till up space shows that the worth of a brand can be much
on supermarket shelves, leavmg Jess room for greater than a company's physical assets. For
competltors. Even If one brand 'cannibalizes' (or example, in the early 2000s, the value of the top
eats into) or takes business away from another ranked brand, Coca-Cola, was calculated at over
one produced by the same company, the sales $70 billion. Consequently, a company's market
do not go to a competitor. Having tluee out of value (the combined pnce of alllts shares) can be
12 brands m a market generally g1ves a greater much greater than its book value - the recorded
market share than having one out of ten, and value of 1ts tangible assets such as buildmgs
gives a company a better chance of getting sorne and machinery. Brand value largely cornes from
of the custom of brand-switchers. customer loyalty: the existence of customers who
will continue to buy the products.

Comprehension
Why do companies' product mixes regularly change?
2 Why do companies brand their products?
3 What is the difference between corporate branding and individual branding?
4 Why do the big soap powder producers have a multi-brand strategy?
5 Why can the market value of companies be much higher than the value of their tangible
assets?

Vocabulary
Fi nd words ·or expressions in the text which mean the following:
1 places of business for selling goods to customers (shops, stores, kiosks, etc.)
2 ail the different products, brands and items that a company sells
3 businesses that sell goods or merchandise to individual consumers
4 a graphie image or symbol specially created to identify a company or a product
5 wrappers and containers used t o enclose and protect a product
6 the extent to which consumers are aware of a brand, and know its na me
7 surfaces in a store on which goods are displayed
8 the sales of a company expressed as a percentage of total sales in a given market
9 consumers who buy various competing products rather than being loyal to a particular
brand

Discussion: Brands and attitudes

What attitude would you associate with the following brands?
• Apple • Louis Vuitton
• BMW • MTV
• Harley-Davidson • Nike
• lkea • Sony
2 Which brands do you have an emotional attachment to, because they
represent your attitudes or feelings?

Products Unit 11 61
 Listening 1: Not just a juice bar IJID
Melissa Glass has opened a chain of juice bars in Switzerland. Listen to her
tai king about Zeste Juice Bars, and answer the questions.
1 What lines of products do Zeste sell?
2 Why does Mel issa Glass say 'we don't consider ourse Ives just a juice bar'?

Listening 2: The origin of smoothies 1J1D

Listen to Melissa Glass talking about where smoothies come from, and why they
launched the product in Switzerland, and answer the questions.
1 Where did the concept of juice bars originate, and how did it develop?
Melissa Glass and
her partner 2 Where did Melissa and her husband first see the concept?
3 Why did they decide to open their juice bars in Switzerland?

Listening 3: Launching the product IJID

Listen to Melissa Glass talking about doing market research and opening the
first store, and answer the questions. Then listen again to check your answers.
1 Fill in t he gaps below in what Melissa says.

1
We had to do research into _ _ _ __ , we had to do research into colours, what
_ _ _ _ _ where it was going to be the most successful. We knew th at obviously we
needed 3 _ _ _ _ _ ._ _ _ _ _ passage. The problem with that in Switzerland is the
locations, the places with high passage are extremely expensive, so it's always a balance
between getting somewhere that's got enough passage but not too, too expensive,
because wh en you're sel ling a product that has a cost priee of five francs you have tose li
a lot of juices and smoothies to cover the base, the 4 . Apart
from that we had to do obviously questionnaire friends, take surveys, we had to do, we
aIso did 5 6
, we did a couple of parties at our place to try the
different products, and to choose the different smoothies that we were going to start with.

2 What does 'high-frequency passage' mean?

3 Why did they give their bars and products English names?
4 What was their plan after launching in Lausanne?

62 Unit 11 Products
 Marketing

Case study: Researching a product concept

ln small groups, choose one of the following businesses,
and think about how you would go about launching it in
your town:
• a juice bar
• a taxi company
• a home-delivery pizza service
• a gym and fitness centre
• a language school
• another business of your choice.

Think about:
1 The product concept: what exactly would the business offer, and how would it differ
from similar, competing businesses?
2 The location: wh at would t he ideal location be, bea ring in mi nd that the closer to t he
town centre and the busier the street, the higher t he rent?
3 The na me of the business, and the image it wants t o project. Wh at ki nd of design
would you use?
4 Pricing : would you try to compete on priee, by being cheaper th an compet itors, or
should you try to be better or different, and charge a higher priee?

Once you have sorne ideas about the product concept, the preferred location,
the name and image, and your pricing strategy, decide how you could do sorne
market research to see whether poten~ial customers would be interested.
What information would you need? Where could you get it?

Could you use the followi ng market research methods?

• questionnaire research: asking questions by telephone or persona!
interviewing
• focus group interviews: getting several potential target customers to meet
(for a small fee) and discuss the product concept
• secondary data: studying government statistics, business newspapers,
magazines and trade journals, reports published by private market research
agencies, competitors' annual reports, etc.
If time permits, carry out the research, and report back.

Writing
Write a short report (150-200 words) either outlining your product concept and
plans for the business, or explaining what research you undertook and what the
results were.

Products Unit 11 63