(It All) Starts With a Great Product!
Importance of Product Benefits!
“Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers…” Seth Godin
A Product is anything with attributes that is offered to people to provide benefits; it contains physical and psychological attributes that are provided to the market to meet needs and wants.
The keywords here are attributes and benefits!
Your product may have great attributes but in order for people to buy it, it must be beneficial to them. These benefits must be different from those your competitors are offering and should be communicated through your product’s:
Quality: Your product’s quality must match your target market’s needs as well as take into consideration the quality level of your competitors’ offerings. Your product’s quality must also be consistent in its performance.
- It is essential to test your product with your target market to ensure that it meets their needs. By observing them using your product and then asking them for their feedback, you can evaluate your quality and gain business intelligence.
- Competitor analysis to understand the quality level of your competitors’ product is also essential. Observing them using your competitors’ product and then collecting feedback provides valuable competitive intelligence.
Features: Your product’s features are the competitive tool kit used to differentiate your product. It is a great way to compete if you provide a product feature that is needed and valued.
- Identifying and deciding which features represent the best value to your target market is best done by speaking to your customers.
Style & Design: The heart and appearance of your product is its style and design. An attractive style and design can help your product gain attention, improve its perception of quality (read our article on Packaging), improve its performance and be more competitive.
- It is important to look into how your target market interacts with your product and how they experience your product given its style and design.
Branding: Branding your product adds value to the products, which gives you room to increase pricing. Branding informs consumers about the quality of your product and helps them easily identify your product.
- Your perception of your brand might be different from how your target market perceives your brand. You should evaluate the perception of your brand as well as the perception of your competitors brand to see how you are positioned in the category.
Products need to be created for consumers and, as such, it is very important for them to be included in all aspects of the product design. People in your target market can help you identify which products they require to meet their needs or wants.
This is where market research comes in: it is essential in the creation and /or redesign of a product that not only offers attributes but also benefits. Contact Versa Research for all your research needs!
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