Marketing Assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Marketing Assignment - Essay ExampleSuccessful differentiation gives the firm a agonistical advantage as customers willing look at the carrefours as superior and unique and can be achieved in various ways. This paper will first detail eight ways to differentiate reaping offerings, and then concentrate on packaging the product in a more fictive manner and incorporating new functional features into the product or product innovation. Strategies for Product Differentiation One way to differentiate products is via product innovation by adding functions or features into a product and commanding a higher price (Trout & Rivkin, 2012 p 34). These features can be added through acquiring or licensing complementary feature sets or by using the firms in-house team for product development. Another way to differentiating products is through packaging. At times, all it takes to differentiate or re-energize a product is via changing the packaging. This was very effective when it was used in coll aboration with another product and delivered in an innovative manner. While this method does not have luxuriant value to change a consumers life, the manner of packaging offers more convenience allowing them to charge more (Trout & Rivkin, 2012 p 45). A firm could also take other market niches in areas that are unsophisticated (Trout & Rivkin, 2012 p 67). ... Yet another product differentiation strategy is via the generation of referrals. A firm, in this case, helps to act upon referrals and create sales models around the type of selling that are consultative while being less confrontational (Trout & Rivkin, 2012 p 76). In a competitive market, prospects referred by happy customers will be inclined to buy products. This can be achieved by offering incentives to current customers in the hope they will site referrals. Other firms will offer increased service as a means of product differentiation. They combine superior service with a commodity product that helps to differentiate th is commodity. Through re-defining their service, the firm, redefines the playing field and offers a home-court advantage since other competitors do not use this combination while they charge a agio for the product. Another strategy is via figuring out what they can guaranty. Since the firm has to deliver on expectations from the client or refund them, they will offer an upfront guarantee (Trout & Rivkin, 2012 p 87). A firm could guarantee their clients that their prices are the best, and offer to refund their money if they find cheaper items of the same quality elsewhere. Since the customer has not time to canvas prices, they will buy this product because the price is guaranteed to be the lowest. Firms could also collaborate with complementary service or product providers when their product does not stand by itself as a unique offering. Both entities benefit from this arrangement, for instance, the HBOs partnerships with motels to show their movies allows HBO to have exclusive vi ewership in these motels while the motels benefit from showing exclusive movies. Finally, a firm could also employ their hidden assets as a