Expected Product
This article covers meaning & overview of Expected Product from marketing perspective.
What is Expected Product?
A product is a good or service being sold to consumers.
Kotler defined 5 levels of a product:
1. Core Benefit
2. Generic Product
3. Expected Product
4. Augmented Product
5. Potential Product
1. Core Benefit: It is the basic need of the consumer, like listening to the FM radio for music/news.
2. Generic Product: It is an assembly created for meeting the core need only, i.e. an assembly of a transistor, an antenna, speaker and the basics to create a radio.
3. Expected Product: it is what the customer expects out of the product when he goes to buy one. So a customer looking to buy a FM radio would want the radio in a proper (probably nice-looking) insulating frame/body where there’s easy mechanism provided to switch stations and change volume, and the sound is clear.
4. Augmented Product: it is what the company provides as a result of competition in that line of products. For example if there’s another company manufacturing and selling FM radios, my company would put in additional features like a CD player, a warranty, a guarantee, an after-sale service, a product manual etc.
5. Potential Product: it is what the product can be made after improvements in the future. Due to competition, the augmented product soon becomes the expected product, i.e. the consumer expects a new radio to always come with a manual and warranty because all the sellers are providing it. So in the future if I want my radio to capture the market over my competitors, is there something I can do to modify the product for the same? Like I may provide a DVD player and LCD screen as well in a more compact body.
For the company to successfully market the product, it is important to understand the expected product. When a new technology is introduced in the market, the necessity of the consumer isn’t enough to make the product a success, it needs to satisfy the consumer i.e. meet or exceed the current consumer expectations.
For example, Starbucks coffee just don’t meet the consumers’ need for coffee, it meets and exceeds expectations.
Hence, this concludes the definition of Expected Product along with its overview.
Browse the definition and meaning of more similar terms. The Management Dictionary covers over 1800 business concepts from 5 categories.
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