Product Usage Categories - Essay Example

Product Usage Categories Complementary goods are those whose purchase creates a need thereby necessitating the purchase of the other. While substitution goods are those, whose purchase invalidates the purchase of the other since they both serve similar purpose. The two are common mechanisms of categorizing products since they help consumers make shopping decisions thereby facilitation the establishment of markets for products in a store. The Minimus.biz website markets a number of products all of which fall in the two categories.

Household, survival and pharmacy products for example fall under the conventional survival package category since they are special products that consumers must use (Aaker & Aaker, 2010). They therefore have conventional and definite market a feature that makes specific producers to compete for the definite demand.Such products as bread and butter or margarine are complementary products since the purchase of bread necessitates the purchase of either margarine or butter, these falls under the food category.

Additionally, the purchase of sugar under the same category necessitates the subsequent purchase of either tea lives or any other beverages. Under the same category, such goods as Pepsi cola and coca cola among other forms of fruit juices are substitution products since the purchase of one brand of a soft drink invalidates the purchase of the other. Such products therefore survive on the relative markets they build for themselves and must carry out independent marketing to win over the market.

This is unlike the case with complementary goods in which the advert of a margarine must couple the advert of bread. Complimentary products are not competitors in the market while substitution goods compete for the same market thereby making the marketing mix components such as price important in their marketing strategies (Tabbush, 2011). ReferencesAaker, D. A., & Aaker, D. A. (2010). Marketing research. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Tabbush, et al. (2011). MBA primer: Marketing management 3.0 instructor-led printed access card (3rd ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning.