Video Transcript: Product Marketing Mix - Part 2

So welcome back to part two of our lecture about the product marketing mix,  talking about products specifically. And in this second module here, we're going  to talk about product mix, product line concepts. Part two, we're going to talk  about some of the overall scope of activities that we'll do, goals and objectives  of product management, activities within a business, some of the activities that a product manager will do, and some overall high level strategy. What sort of  things do they look for? What sort of reaction will they have the some of the  outside, external factors that they're that they're working with, product mix, the  overall scope? There's four terms that marketers use to evaluate a product mix  at a company, the length of the product mix, the width, the depth, and then the  consistency. And we're going to talk about these four items here real quickly.  Just kind of blow through this. It's not maybe a hugely important concept, but  you kind of need to understand it so that when you look at something, you will  understand where it doesn't make sense. Is when you come into a company and let's say they make concrete products, but then they have somebody sitting in a  room that's got a business doing healthcare benefits for other businesses  around the area. I mean, that would not make sense. So this is where we look at the four things we'll look at when we evaluate a product mix at a company. So  hope that, hopefully that example helps a little bit product makes, the overall  assortment of products that a company offers to market the width how many  different product lines are there? So we could take a look at a furniture  company, they may have a product line of lamps, they might have a product line  of chairs, of recliners, or they could have a product line of tables. The length of  the product mix is the overall number of items in the entire product mix or the  catalog. In other words, do they have three particular products that they have in  their catalog, or do they have 300 the depth is the number of variants that are  offered in a product line. So for example, if they make lamps, how many different kinds of lamps do they make? Do they make like pole lamps? Do they make free standing lamps, living room type style lamps, nightstand lamps? You know,  that's what depth is talking about here. And then I briefly just gave you an  example of consistency a moment ago, and that is how closely the product lines  are related to each other. Let's talk. We're going to talk a little bit about the the  width of the product mix, just so you kind of get an idea of this. The width of a  product company's product mix typically refers to the number of unique or  discrete product lines I have. And you can see here, product line number one is  lamps. Product Line Number two is tables, and then the third product line is  chairs. And you can see dining room chairs, living in chairs, bedroom, outdoor,  desk, that kind of thing. So that's an illustration of width, conceptualizing the  product mix in contrast to the width of a product mix. Depth refers to the overall  number of product subgroups within a specific product line. And you can see in  here the different groups that Tata Motors, which is a company, a main, big  manufacturing company in India, they have Tata Motors makes buses, trucks, 

cars. Then you have the Tata group that makes bars. They make plates, in other words, steel bar, steel plate. And then they have the other division, Tata tea, and they have a division that makes tea. So that is that gives you kind of the depth of what they're talking about, the width and your and again, the depth is the vertical part here. And if probably the previous slide, I think, was actually a better  

example of it, you can see the lamps where you have table lamps, ceiling lamps, track desks, and that will give you a depth of a product line within lamps, for  example. Instead of making just one lamp, you make several different types of  lamps, or many different types of tables, for example. So this is actually probably a better but this slide does illustrate the width. So Tata group actually has  multiple subsidiaries, and each of those subsidiaries actually specializes in  manufacturing different product lines of product. So benefits of width and depth.  Why? The question this all begs the question, why width typically enables a  marketing strategy of one stop shopping. So if you go to any of these big box  home improvement stores like Home Depot or Lowe's or Menards or any of  those other big companies. One Stop you can buy just about any product you'd  ever possibly need to have for your home. You don't have to go from one store  to the next store to the next store. The depth, in addition to the one stop  shopping, also allows the manufacturer to capture a lot of efficiencies of scale.  And this is probably a very important point here, from a marketing perspective,  from a manufacturer's perspective, that you can actually get a lot of well, like I  said, the efficiency of scale by sharing common components, sharing common  fixed costs or assemblies across many multiple products. So it's not just the cost of goods, of manufacturing a specific product, but actually the cost of marketing, of promoting these different products to the your consumers or to your target  market. So that's a good explanation of why the width and depth of these  product lines is so important. Product Management, we talked a little bit about  this before. This is probably one of my favorite areas in the topic of marketing. Is Product Management. You're taking a discrete product or set of products within  a group or specific type of software, and you're going to take that and put it out  in the market. You're responsible for that thing capturing a specific amount of  market share, not only that, but you're also responsible for making sure that that  whole product line is profitable. Product Management is really a common, very  common, management position in a lot of the larger businesses, especially in  manufacturing or businesses that have sophisticated products that require a lot  of dedicated training and expertise, and I'm thinking specifically of aerospace,  for example, they will very often have product managers that are intimately  familiar with the specific type of jet engine that they need to manufacture at their facility, for example. But it's not only the really huge corporations that use  product managers. I'm personally very familiar with product managers from the  software business, where you have a software company that has a lot of  different software products for the business market, and they might have a 

product manager that is responsible for just one of those software, software  products, and that individual is responsible for growing the sales, of preempting  the competition, paying attention to what competition. So there's a lot of things  that go on with this. It's exciting. I enjoy it. I enjoy this particular part of marketing a lot. What is product project, product management? Of the definition, it's the  process of monitoring or managing all aspects of the marketing mix, including  the price, the promotion, advertising, product design, features and benefits,  logistics and channel management within the market of a single product line  within a business enterprise. And I think that does a great job of really  summarizing what product management is all about, the marketing mix, a  product marketing mix, product management there's a couple of different things  that we'll be talking about here going forward, product management  components, factors that influence change product management strategies and  management objectives. So let's talk a little bit about the objectives of a product  manager. They will very be very tuned in to design product they'll design product strategies for capturing market share for new product launch strategy. How are  they going to do that? How are they going to introduce a product to capture the  attention of the marketplace. Who are they going to contact? What are they  going to say? When are they going to do that identifying market opportunities.  They've got their ear to the ground. They are the person at that company that is  responsible for paying attention to what's going on. Uh, in the external market  area, and how it's going to affect their product and their business. They'll  manage each stage of the product life cycle. We haven't talked about that yet,  but there is a discrete, explicit product life cycle, from introduction through a  point where you actually, kind of like pull the plug and you move on with  something new generate. They're responsible for generating new product ideas  and product upsell opportunities. That is a great term, upsell opportunities that  we'll talk a lot more about later on in other modules, ongoing in depth analysis of the competitors, and this is really a critical function of what a product manager is doing at any given enterprise. What are the competitors doing? How are they  reacting to any initiatives that you're putting out there in terms of your own  product management strategy. What are they doing? Are they cutting prices or  raising prices? Are they investing in more inventory? So this is all stuff that you  that these people are going to be paying attention to on a daily basis, product  management activities, three common ones that they'll do, planning, forecasting  and marketing, and so let's talk a little bit going forward here about specific  factors that influence change relative to product management skills. So you're a  product manager, you're at a big company, you have a software product that  you're responsible for. You may have a lot of salespeople out in the field, but  you're the one that when they have a question from a client, you're the one that  they turn to and say, Well, what about this or how does that situation fit into this  particular application? You're the one with the answers. So factors that influence

change that a product manager is going to be paying a lot of attention to, are  changes in market demand? Are orders increasing or are the number of orders  decreasing? The cost of production? What happens if the price of sheet steel  starts to increase dramatically over a short period of time for whatever reason.  How is that going to affect the product? How is that going to affect the pricing?  How is that going to affect your competitors? And what's your answer going to  be to that? So in a lot of ways, it's like playing chess, a virtual game of chess, if  you will, quantity of production, how many, if you have a long lead time on  production? What? How many weeks or months out in advance do you need to  be building inventory changes in the company? Strategy or desire. Is this  product a part of the path going forward for your business? And then the last  point here factors that influence change. What are the actions and reactions that your competitors have to anything that you're doing or not doing so let's talk a  little bit about product mix strategies. Some of the examples of typical product  management strategies that are commonly used is expanding the product mix,  specifically adding new components to the product mix. So if you're making  lamps, maybe next month, you start making lamps for patios or decks or  whatever, in addition to the stuff you do for the living room or the family room or  whatever, reducing or eliminating the product mix. So you could be looking at  shrinking the product line, altering existing products. And again there. Here's a  strategy where maybe you're making and selling lamps that sell for $20 a pop,  and you say, Well, gee, if we gold plate them, we could sell that same lamp for  $750 so I mean, there's just different things that you can do with existing  products that could put you in a whole, completely new category. So you're not  just making el cheapo lamps that you could buy mail order now you're making  expensive, more expensive stuff that you might find at a higher end furniture  retailer, for example. So the next this kind of brings us to the close of our second lecture on product marketing, or the marketing mix regarding product and in the  final presentation, the next presentation we're going to have about product  marketing, we're going to talk about, all many of the issues about launching new products and the concept of product life cycles, and that's going to kind of wrap  up a lot of the fundamental stuff about marketing that we've had to cover so far.  And then after this, this particular module of three presentation is completed, we start getting into some fun stuff like email marketing and content marketing,  search marketing, just some fun stuff that can be very relevant to you as you  move your ministry or your nonprofit or even your business forward in the future. Thanks for watching.