Type of Product the Company Will Offer and Its Primary Characteristics
The product that will be offered in the market is bottled mineral water. This product falls in the beverage industry. For a long time, water has been considered as a free product that could not be sold like other beverages. However, this has changed over the recent past. Water is currently one of the most profitable beverages in this industry (Sandhusen, 2008). This product has a number of characteristics that make it unique in the market. These primary characteristics are discussed below.
- This product is liquid in nature, and therefore must be packaged in a way that would ensure that it does not poor out.
- The product is not highly perishable. Bottled water can stay in the store of days or even weeks without perishing.
- The product requires cool storage, especially when the temperatures are high. This helps in enhancing its quality.
- The product is considered healthy. Other types of beverages, like the cola drinks, have been criticized because they have additives that may affect one’s health. Health experts, on the other hand, recommend water.
The above characteristics make this product unique in this industry. This company can, therefore, make profits if the management of the product is done appropriately.
Service Component of the Product and how it can be used to enhance the Product
Bottled water is a product. It would be considered as a product because it is tangible. However, this product has services that make it unique. The main service that this product offers is quenching thirst. This product has the capacity to quench the thirst of the consumer. This service can be enhanced to make the product more desirable in the market. During hot seasons, more customers would be coming for water to quench their thirsts. The product can be kept in a refrigerator in order to lower its temperatures. When a customer orders this product to quench their thirst, they will get maximum satisfaction from the product.
When the weather is cold, especially during winter, the need for water is reduced. However, health experts encourage that people should drink water even during such cold seasons (Govoni, 2004). For this reason, consumers would still come for this product. However, the reason for the purchase would change from the need to quench thirst, to the need to meet the directives of the health experts. The product can now change its role from quenching thirst, to increase body temperature. It would require the retailer of the product to ensure that the product is made warm enough to attract customers.
Some consumers buy bottled water as a sign of class. Environmentalists have tried to encourage people to drink tap water, stating that the difference between tap water and bottled water is very negligible. They have argued that what makes tap water more preferable is the fact that bottled water increases the level of pollution in the environment, especially if the bottles are not well handled. However, the market for bottled water is still on the rise. The youths prefer bottled water as a sign of class (Levitt, 2008). They, therefore, purchase bottled water for their service of showing their class to their peers. Given the fact that youths make the largest market share for this product, this service can be enhanced to increase the profitability of the product in the market.
The packaging can be done to reflect the class these youths are yearning for. The management should consider making the packaging as prestigious as possible. This would include the shape of the bottle and the graphics. This would increase the number of customers who purchase this product because of prestige.
Water has been considered as a product that is very important to the body. Besides quenching thirst, which is the instant satisfaction one, gets by taking water, this product offers other services (Cespedes 76). Water is responsible for all the metabolic processes in the body. This service can be enhanced through advertisements. The management can emphasize the biological importance of this product.
Expansion of the Product
Building a brand is one of the most challenging tasks that a marketer may face in the current society. As such, many companies prefer expanding the line and breadth of their known product as a way of expansion. This product can follow the same path in an attempt to increase its market share. To extend the line of product, the management can consider going beyond packaging the product is smaller portable quantities. The production department should consider packaging the product in ten or twenty liters for home consumption. This new line of the product would target families (Holt, 2002). To expand the depth of the product, every line of the product would be packaged differently to reflect such factors as the difference in religion. There are shapes that a certain society may or may not prefer because of their faith. This would require the management to understand the societal structure, segment it, and offer products that would best satisfy it.
Change in Core Business in Response to Industry or Market Changes
The market is very unpredictable. The emerging technologies have brought new ways of operating in the current society. As Cesspits (1995) says, it is easier to change the internal structures of business to suite external forces than to manipulate external factors to internal suite forces of business. It is therefore very important for a business unit to consider restructuring its structures to be in line with the expectations of the market. The core business structure should be put to be in line with the changing environmental forces. One of the factors that would dictate the core business strategy is the emerging technologies. Emerging technologies have changed communication strategy, the logistics, production process, management of the personnel and many other structures in the market.
When managing a product such as bottled water, it would require an individual to change core business strategy quite often. It is important to note that this would not involve changing the vision of the firm. The vision of the firm is one of the core factors that would not easily be changed in a short-term basis, unless there are some drastic changes that have to be implemented (Sharma, 2009). However, operational policies should be changed quite often. To achieve this, the management would have to be very flexible. Flexibility in this context would mean being able understand market dynamics, and responding to them as soon as they appear. Some care should, however be exercised. This is because not every technology that comes to the market is relevant. The management should therefore take precautions when implementing any change. This way, it would be easy to succeed in the market.
References
Cespedes, F. (1995). Concurrent marketing: Integrating product, sales, and service. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press.
Govoni, N. (2004). Dictionary of marketing promotion. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.
Holt, K. (2002). Market oriented product innovation: A key to survival in the third millennium. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group.
Levitt, T. (2008). Marketing myopia. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business Press.
Sandhusen, R. (2008). Marketing. New York, N.Y: Barron’s Educational Series Inc.
Sharma, M. (2009). Product management: Product lifecycles and competitive marketing strategy. New Delhi: Global India Publications.