Saturday, April 24, 2010

Product Differentiation

It is important for a company to make sure their products are different from their competitors. The use of product differentiation includes the quality, features, and support services of each product. The different products helps to attract a vast variety of customers. It also helps make your product stand out as opposed to one of your competitors.

To start, the quality of the product is one of the most important parts of a product. It it what first will attract a customer to a certain product line, or ever store. For example, there are some products that may look exactly the same but the quality is different. A car for instance, Toyota, could have a life expectancy of 10 years where as a Honda may be known to have a life expectancy of 15 years. This is all due to the quality of the product. They may have the same features and support services but the overall quality is more reliable and longer lasting.

Next, the features of a product is what may be the deciding factor for some people as to which brand to buy. For example, the ipad and the kindle are two very similar products. But they both have different features. The features one of them has may work for one customer while the features the other has may work for another. The ipad is in color, where as the kindle is not. This could be what helps the consumer make the purchasing choice.

Finally, the support services of a product can set them aside from the rest. Many electronics equipment have support services over the phone. Whether or not the service is in an area where the language they speak one can understand, or if it is outsourced could affect the satisfaction of the customer. The less satisfied a customer is, the more they could spread the word which could cause less customers.

In the end it is best to have product differentiation because it helps give a customer a variety of options. What part of product differentiation do you think you pay most attention to when looking to make a purchase?

No comments:

Post a Comment