Introduction: Product Marketing Questions
Product marketing in a business addresses five important strategic questions:
- What products will be offered (i.e., the breadth and depth of the product line)?
- Who will be the target customers (i.e., the boundaries of the market segments to be served)?
- How will the products reach those (i.e., the distribution channel and are there viable possibilities that create a solid business model)?
- At what price should the products be offered?
- How will customers be introduced to the products (i.e., advertising)?
In this unit, you're going to learn about the relationship between the breadth of the product line and the product mix.
Product Line Breadth
The breadth of the product mix consists of all the product lines that the company has to offer to its customers. If we take P&G, for example, the breadth of the major product lines would consists of hair products, oral care, soaps and detergents, baby care, and personal care.
Proctor and Gamble's Brands
P&G has various product lines.
You may also hear the product line breadth referred to as the product width, product assortment width, and merchandize breadth.
Product Line Breadth and the Product Mix
The product mix of a company is generally defined as the complete set of all products a business offers to a market. The product mix (sometimes called "product assortment") is made up of both product lines and individual products.
A product line is a group of products within the product mix that are closely related, either because they function in a similar manner, are sold to the same customer groups, are marketed through the same types of outlets or fall within given price ranges.
An individual product is a particular product within a product line. It is a distinct unit within the product line that is distinguishable by size, price, appearance, or some other attribute. For example, all the courses a university offers constitute its product mix, courses in the marketing department constitute a product line, and the principles of marketing course is a product item.
Now, there are four dimensions associated with a company's product mix and the product line breadth is one of them. The other three are the length, the depth, and the consistency.
Going back in our P&G example we saw five different product lines: hair products, oral care, soaps and detergents, baby care, and personal care. This means that the product mix breadth is five.