The Product P

One of the things I find hard to teach is the idea of product as one of the ‘P’s of the marketing mix. Students have no trouble with the idea that MacDonald’s sells burgers, Persil washing powder or that Amazon flogs books for example, but trying to get the idea that Amazon sells convenience and value and choice is much harder. Kodak used to claim to sell ways of recording memories rather than film (now they don’t sell much of anything!).

This was an article that was originally posted by Geoff to explain Lego’s high price. I recently used it illustrate the more intangible aspects of the product.

Lego do not sell plastic stacking bricks. Apparently, they sell the ability to create and tell your own stories. Cee’s candies (never heard of them either) don’t sell chocolate they sell a way to say ‘I love you’. This was followed up by a look at the Vodafone logo to discuss what it is that they are actually selling.

I also showed a couple of Levis ads to try to generate ideas of what it is they are selling. This could easily be extended into a homework, where the students define a range of company’s products and provide evidence to back this up.
All of which flowed neatly into the next lesson on branding. For those teaching IB, this ticks all those ToK boxes too.

The Levis ads are available here along with a load of others that would be equally suitable. (This is a really useful website for adverts and one I seem to keep going back to).