Product Differentiation Essay Example for Free

Product Differentiation Essay interpretationDevelopment or incorporation of attributes (such as benefits, price, quality, styling, serve, etc.) that a products intended customers perceive to be dissimilar and desirable. advertising and promotion of a product is based on its resistentiating characteristics. Source http//www.businessdictionary.com/definition/product- distinction.htmlToday, the grocery store is crowded with standardised brands, clamoring for the attention of customers. In order for their brands to stand out, companies strive hard to make them appear disagreeent from competing brands. This is product speciality. Product differentiation is an objective that a business may try to achieve through and through its marketing. Any business, must try to differentiate products from those of competitors, so as to gain a competitive touch over them, thereby imbibeing more customers. This difference bear be achieved by altering the product- making it interrupt than t hat of the competitors or it can be perceived- such as a virile brand identity developed in the promotional campaign.Need for product differentiationusually customers can non regularize the difference between competing products- hence the need to differentiate developing a competitive advantage point and differentiationA product may have a lot of attributes, but it is essential to decoct on only few of the attributes. Eg Volvo-safety, BMW-performance but it doesnt mean that Volvo does non perform or BMW is not safe. They have just center on those aspects of their products. Therefore their products result be differentiated on that picky attribute. If a product claims to be good at everything, you run the risk of consumers not believing what you say, counterbalance though you may have all those attributes. If a product is focused 1) more credible 2) customers will think that they are as strong in other areas.What to differentiateEasiest path to differentiate is on price, but it is least effective as competitors can always copy it easily. subject Indian computer market included companies such as HCL and IBM. Then came Siva from sterling computers which sold its computers at a cheaper price. Therefore others followed suit, and then Siva had to further differentiate its product in order to attract customers as competing products were similarly priced. Hence, it is better to differentiate on other attributes such as- features, performance, reliability, reparability, design, style, performance and so on.Examples1) Blackberry- separate by addition of BBM in their smart phones. Although other smart phones with IM platforms existed, Blackberry was the one of the first to carry this service to customers as a standard on its devices. Their competition did not have some(prenominal) such service at the time. This attracted customers. 2) Promise- People thought promise was different from other toothpastes as it had clove tree oil however even some other toothpa stes had clove oil, but only Promise focused on this attribute and hence it was perceived as a differentiating characteristic. 3) Hero Honda motorcycles- differentiated in terms of fuel efficiency- fill it shut it, forget itBranding and Product differentiationBranding is one way of differentiating products and services. Industries like the garments and tobacco industries, for example, use branding very effectively as the products within these segments are a lot very similar and have little to severalise themselves from to each one other. Branding helps to retain customer loyalty. Example Smokers, are very particular about their brand and believe that no other brand can meet them. In an experiment, 300 smokers who were loyal to 3 major brands were given an unidentifiable sample of each brand to smoke and were asked to identify their own brand.The result only 35% were able to identify the brands and nether the law of averages, pure guesses accounted for a third of correct identif ications. The reason for this was that brands of cigarettes within the same category (menthol for example) differ very marginally in terms of strength, flavourand taste, and it is difficult for a smoker to truly distinguish between them. The reason why a smoker is loyal to a particular brand is the advertisment. Eg Charminar it takes charminar to satisfy a man like you reinforces that only Charminar can satisfy the man who smokes themProduct differentiation vs USPUSP is not the same as Product differentiation.USP refers to advertising to communicate a products differentiation while Product differentiation is the process of describing the differences between products or services.Types of differentiationHorizontal Differentiation is by the customers taste perception/taste of certain characteristics of the product. (Same qualities/price, different style/taste/colour) Perceived value remains the same. (eg different colors of lipsticks) Vertical Products differ in some characteristic wh ich all consumers agree is best. Based on quality. Prices differ as perceived value differs (eg Different brands of lipstick Mac, Lakme, Lipice) Horizontal differentiation is about consumers wants and preferences, while upended differentiation focuses on the consumers willingness to pay for the quality.RememberDO NOT offer wildly exaggerated differentiation that the market does not want. (eg High priced mens toilet soap Aramusk was unsuccessful due to price)DO NOT negate useful and expansive differentiation by under attending to other move of the product- service package. The difference should be OVER AND ABOVE the MINIMUM expectations.Example Fancy hotels with poor serviceThe product is not differentiated until the CUSTOMER understands the difference . The consumer perception is what matters.