Wanted and Unwanted Products - Case Study Example

1. Creation of goods, products and services goes on in an exponential stride. A remains oblivious of the existence of particular goods or service as long as they are not introduced to him. Companies hype the ‘want’ of particular product in the market. Thus consumers are flooded with deluge of ‘wanted’ and ‘unwanted’ information that create good and bad want. The marketing concept states that all activities of an organization are driven by the need to satisfy a customer. The aim of marketing concept is to arrive at a fit between customer want and organizational capabilities.

The fit is attained in an ideal market when supply just offsets the demand. Sales people use their social skills to discern the needs of the customer and use the product knowledge to present products and services to match those needs (Charan, 2007). Production that exceeds the customer wants leads to stockpiling of unused goods at the company’s end. It is termed as flawed productivity. On the contrary, a ‘hyped up’ consumer want may lead to customer buying wrong products, leading to aversion.

Hence the creation of a want is justified so long as it just matches the needs of the customer, neither exceeding nor falling short. Credit card companies promote the card as a tool to avail limited period credit on shopping. This is an example of good want creation. As a bad example, these very companies motivate the bearers of cards to go on reckless shopping sprees thus accumulating debt. Most often, companies use psychological, emotional, subliminal and intellectually persuasive means through marketing institutions and advertisements to trump up customer wants.

Companies target their persuasive campaigns at customers. The consumer has to discern his requirements from the maze of information. Thus the final decision as to what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ want rests with the customer. Reference Charan, R, (2007), What the Customer Wants You to Know Penguin Publishers (US). 2. Product Life Cycle is a simulation of the life of product sales with biological concepts of birth, growth, maturity and decline as depicted in the Product Life Cycle Diagram.

Each stage is marked by a discernible change in the ‘marketing mix’ of product, price, distribution, and promotion. In the introductory stage a product is created, and is entrenched in consumer consciousness through marketing, product branding, and awareness concepts. The stage is marked by low turnover, little or no competition, less profits and high advertisement costs. Hybrid engine automobiles run on alternative fuels are, now, in the introductory stage. It is followed by growth stage, which is marked by increase in product demand, quick turnarounds times, rise in volumes and increase in quality and profits.

The exponential rise in profits and commensurate increase in distribution channels leads to gaining of competitive advantage by the firm. Windows Vista system of Microsoft is in the growth stage. The maturity stage is marked by heavy volumes of sales, increase in profits, and lowering of rate of in sales lowers. Automobiles run on internal combustion engines are in the maturity stage. Decline stage is marked by production differentiation market saturation, lowering of sales, high competition and diminishing of profits.

The marketing mix of product differentiation, price reduction, and carving of new distribution channels and building of brand loyalty are salient features of marketing mix is adopted in the decline stage. CD players are now in the decline stage. Product life cycle management means to actually monitor, control, and change product lifecycles and lifecycle processes (Saaksvuori, and Immonen, 2005). The product life cycle can be increased by rejuvenating a product and augmenting its features through product life cycle management.

Hybrid vehicles powered both by internal combustion engines and alternative fuel technologies is an example where product life cycle of gas run automobiles is sought to be increased through hybridization of engine. All major automobile manufacturing companies are keenly experimenting on hybrid technologies in face of rising pollution caused by internal combustion powered automobiles and shrinking petroleum resources. Reference Saaksvuori, A., and Immonen, A., (2005), Product Lifecycle Management, 2nd Edition, Springer Publishers (USA)