According to Philip Kotler, product is the first and most important element of the marketing mix. Product strategy calls for making coordinated decisions on product mixes, product lines, brand, and packaging and labeling. In planning its market offering, the marketer needs to think through the five levels of the product, the augmented product, and the potential product, which encompasses all the augementations and transformations the product might ultimately undergo. Product can be classified in several ways. In terms of durability and reliability, products can be nondurable goods, durable goods, or services. I(n the consumer-goods category, products are convenience goods (staples, impulse goods, emergency goods), shopping goods ( homogeneous and heterogeneous), specialty goods, or unsought goods. In the industrial-goods category, products fall into one of three categories; materials and parts (raw materials and manufactured materials and parts), capital items (installations and equipment), or supplies and business services (operating supplies, maintenance and repair items, maintenance and repair services, and business advisory services). Brands can be differentiated on the basis of a number of different product or service dimensions; product form, features, performance, conformance, durability, reability, repairability, style, and design, as well as such service dimensions as ordering ease, delivery, installation, customer training, customer consulting, and maintance and repair. Most companies sell more than one product. A product mix can be classified according to width, length, depth, and consistency. These four dimensions are the tools for developing the company’s marketing strategy and deciding which product lines to grow, maintain, harvest, and divest. To analyze a product line and decide how many resources should be invested in that line, product-line managers need to look at sales and profits and market profile. A company can change the product component of iys marketing mix by lengthening its product via line stretching (down-market, up-market, or both) or line filling, by modernizing. Its products, by featuring certain products, and by pruning its products to eliminate the least profitable. Brands are often sold or marketed jointly with other brans. Ingredient brans and co-brands can add value assuming they have equity and are perceived as fitting appropriately. Physical products have to be packaged and labeled. Well-designed packages can create convenience value for customers and promotional value for producers. In effect, they can act as “five second commercials” for the product. Warranties and guarantees can offer further assurance to consumers.

A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or some combination of these elements, intended to identify the goods and servies of one seller or group of sells and to differentiate them from those of competitors. The different components of a brand-brand names, logos, symbols, package designs, and so on are brand elements. Brands offer a number of benefits to customers and firms. Brands are valuable intangible assets that need to be managed carefully. The key to branding is that need to be managed carefully. The key to branding is that consumers perceive differences among brands in a product category. Brand equity should be defined in terms of marketing effects uniquely attributable to a brand. That is, brand equity relates to the fact that different outcomes result in the marketingof a product or service because of its brand, as compared to the results if that same product or service was not identified by that brand. Building brand equity depends on three main factors : (1) The initial choices for the brand elements or identities making up the brand; (2) The way the brand is integrated into the supporting marketing program; and (3) the associations indirectly transferred to the brand by linking the brand to some other entity (e.g., the company, country of origin, channel of distribution, or another brand). Brand equity needs to be measured in order to be managed well. Brand audits are in-depth examinations of the health of a brand and can be used to set strategic direction for the brand. Tracking studies involve information collected from consumers on a routine basis over time and provide valuable tactical insights into the short-term effectiveness of marketing programs and activities. Brand audits measure “where the brand has been,” and tracking studies measure “where the brand is now” and whether marketing programs are having the inteded effecs. A branding strategy for a firm identifies which brand elements a firm chooses to apply across the various products it sells. In a brand extension, a firm uses an established brand name to introduce a new product. Potential extensions brand equity to a new product, as well as how effectively the extension, in turn, contributes to the equity of the exsting parent brand. Brands can play a number of different roles within the brand portofolio. Brands may expand coverage, provide protection, extend an image, or fulfill a variety of other roles for the firm. Each brand name product must have a well-defined positioning. In that way, brands can maximize coverage and minimize overla[ and thus optimize the portofolio