Chapter 11: Product Lifecycle &

Branding
CLASS NOTES
Branding:
Generic- no brand whatsoever.
-Peaked at 2% market share in US
-Only works in a price sensitive market
-Works well in low-involvement situations
Manufacturer/National- owned by and sponsored by people
who make the product.
-Most brands in US fall in this category
Private/Store- sponsored by the retailer.
-(HEB, Kroger brand products)
-20-25% market share in US
Types of Branding:
Individual- everything a company makes is marketed under
different brand names.
Blanket Family- everything a company makes has the same
brand name.
Separate Family- separate family names for different types
of goods.
Brand Names:
-Legally protectable
-Inherently memorable
-Supports image (ie: masculine products needs masculine
name)
Fanciful Brand Name
-Receives full protection from courts
-Made up name, means nothing
-The only value in the name was put there by the people
who created it
-(ie: Exxon)

Arbitrary Brand Name

-Real word, but arbitrarily assigned to a product category
-(ie: Apple)
Suggestive Brand Name
-Suggests an attribute of the product
-(ie: Everready)
EVERYTHING BELOW RECIEVES MUCH LESS COURT
PROTECTION
Descriptive Brand Name
-Simply describes the product
-Little protection, only way to defend in court is secondary
meaning
-(ie: Yellow pages)
Generic
-Receives no protection
-Aspirin, Zipper, Cola all used to be brand names but are
now generic.
Characteristics of Memorable Brand Names:
1. Simple
a. Short, easy to say, one syllable
2. Distinctive
3. Meaningful
a. Easy to recall (ie: Apple)
b. Non-meaningful: needs recognition (ie: Xerox,
Exxon)
4. Verbal/Sound associate of product class
a. Woof = dog food store
5. High mental imagery
a. Easily get a visual referent from the name. Dog,
Apple, Rabit. Abstract nouns have lower visual
referent. Use concrete nouns
6. Emotional
a. Attracts attention and adds an extra code of
memory. Not necessarily a positive emotion. #1
correlate with memory

7. Repetitive sounds
a. Rhythm allows you to recall brand names more
easily. Alliteration- repetition of consonance.
Assonance- repetition of vowels. Consonancerepetition of consonance but with a vowel change

Product Lifecycle:

Stages:
Mkt. Introduction
-Sales curve low, slowly rising
-Few, if any, competitors
-Production problems/ training problems
Strategies: (4 Ps Mktg)
-Target most willing buyers, they will recognize your
competitive advantage
-Limited product versions
-High price (skimming the cream)

-Heavy promotion to build awareness, generate trials

-Selective distribution
Alternatives:
-Low price for penetration of market (depends on
competition)

Adopter Type: Innovators

-Venturesome
-Risk takers/open minded/inner directed (dont care
what you think)/ low credibility
-Low brand loyalty
-Tend to be urban/cosmopolitan & mobile
-Impersonal information sources
Demographics:
-Young (relatively speaking)
-High education
-High income
-High social status
Mkt. Growth
-Rapidly rising sales occur
-Rising & peaking profits
-Increasing competition
-Word of mouth in marketplace
Strategies:
-Product improvements & expanded product line
-Price remains high or slowly decrease
-Distribution expanding
-High promotion (persuasive)
Alternatives:
-Low price
-Low promotion, if word of mouth is taking over
Adopter Type #1: Early adopters

-Respectable
-They are opinion leaders, key group
-Very socially integrated
-High credibility
-Impersonal information sources
Demographics:
-Young (relatively speaking)
-High education, income, and social status
Adopter Type #2: Early Majority
-Deliberate
-Cautious and conservative
-Hard to motivate with promotions
-Evaluation is hang-up. (They get hung-up in
evaluation stage)
-Large peer interactions
-Mix of personal and impersonal info sources

status

Demographics:
-Slightly below average age
-Slightly above average education, income, and social

Mkt. Maturity
-Slow, leveling off of sales/peak sales
-Intense competition
-Over-capacity in industry
-Profits decline
Strategies:
-Lower price
-Distribution at its most intense
-Promotion (some forms) lowered to reminder levels
-Product modification, repositioning, and
differentiation
-Target market modifications
Alternatives:
-Higher promotion with modofications

Adopter Type #1: Late Majority

-Skeptical
-Very conservative
-Motivated by peer pressure
-Personal information sources
Demographics:
-Below average income, education, social status
-Above average age
Adopter Type #2: Laggards
-Traditional
-Strong past-orientation / isolated (rural)
-Few friends or social interactions
-Guilt feelings about new products
-Actively resist innovation & change
Demographics:
-LOWEST education, income, social status
-HIGHEST age
Mkt. Decline
-Sustained sales decline
-Declining profits
-Market preferences shift
-Competition withdraws (the weakest competition
withdrew in maturity)
Strategies:
-Low price
-Low promotion
-Cut back distribution
-Limited product line/drop product
-Identify/target loyal users
Alternatives:
-Loss leader: leads people to other products you have
that are more profitable
-Product line round-out
-Major relaunch

Attributes of Products Adopted Quickly

1. Competitive advantage
2. Easy to use
3. Easy to communicate (about the product)
4. Can it be tried? (sample or trial period)
5. Compatible with your lifestyle and use patterns?

ADDITIONAL BOOK NOTES

Four Aspects of the Product Lifecycle
Length
-No set time that it takes a product to move through its
lifecycle
-Technological change tends to shorten product lifecycles
as new product innovation replaces existing products
Shape
-The shape above is the generalized life cycle, but not
all products have the same shape in their curves
-A high-learning product is one for which significant
customer education is required, so there is an extended
introduction period
-Sales for a low-learning product begin immediately
b/c little learning is required by the customer.
-A fashion product is a style of the times. They are
introduced, decline, and then seem to return. Cycles may
be months, years, or decades.
-A fad experiences rapid sales on introduction and then
an equally rapid decline. Typically have very short
lifecycles.
Product Level: Class and Form
-The product lifecycle shown before is a total industry or
product class curve.

-Product class: the entire product category or industry (ie:

prerecorded music)
-Product form: variations within the product class (ie:
tech used to provide the music, such as cassettes, CDs,
and digital players)
Lifecycle and Consumers
-Several factors affect whether a customer will adopt a
new product or not
-Usage barrier: the product is not compatible with
existing habits
-Value barriers: the product provides no incentive to
change
-Risk barriers: physical, economic, or social
-Psychological barriers: cultural differences or image

Random Extras
-Product Modification: altering a products characteristics,
such as quality, performance, or appearance, to increase
its value to customers
-Market Modification: companies try to find new
customers, increase a products use among existing
customers, or create new use situations
-Product Repositioning: changes the place a product
occupies in a consumers mind relative to competitive
products. A company can reposition a product by
changing one or more of the four marketing mix
elements.
-Four factors that trigger the need for a repositioning
action
1. Reacting to a competitors position
2. Reaching a new market
3. Catching a rising trend
4. Changing the value offered

Chapter 12: Services Marketing

BOOK NOTES
Services: intangible activities or benefits (airline trips, financial
advice) that an organization provides in exchange for money.
Four Is of Service
Intangibility- services are intangible, they cant be held or
seen before the purchase decision. To help consumers
assess and compare services, companies try to make
them tangible and show the benefits of using the service.
Inconsistency- developing pricing, promotion, and
delivery or services can be challenging because quality of
service can be inconsistent. Because services depend on
the people who provide them, quality varies with each
person.

Inseparability- the consumer does not separate the

deliverer of the service from the service itself. Consumer
might dislike the deliverer of the service and therefore
rate the service itself as worse/subpar.
Inventory- inventory carrying costs are subjective with
services, and relate to idle production capacity (when
the service provider is available but there is no demand
for the service). The inventory cost of a service is the
cost of paying the person used to provide the service
along with any needed equipment.
Service Continuum: the range of product-dominant to servicedominant offerings of a company.
Classifying Services
1. Delivery by People or Equipment
2. Profit or Nonprofit Organizations
3. Government Sponsored

How Consumers Purchase Services

The Purchase Process
-Services have experience properties, which can be
discerned only after purchase or during consumption
-Services provided by specialized professionals have
credence properties, or characteristics that the
consumer may find impossible to evaluate even after
purchase.
Assessing Service Quality
-Consumers compare expectations about a service to the
actual experience
-Differences between the consumers expectations and
experience are identified through gap analysis
Customer Contact and Relationship Marketing
-Service encounters: the judgments of consumers on
the sequence of steps that make up a service

-Firms develop customer contact audits to focus on

these steps
-Very important in high contact services
Seven Ps of Services Marleting
1. Product (Service)
2. Price
3. Place (Distribution)
4. Promotion
5. People
6. Physical Environment
7. Process