TEST YOURSELF

Chapter 10: Marketing the Total Product: Brand, Image, Warranty, and Packaging

Essay Questions

1. A physical product (i.e. a good) has four components: core product, brand image, warranty, and services. Break down each of the following brands of goods into its four components.

a. Levi’s jeans
b. Breyer’s ice cream
c. Sony Trinitron television
d. Tim Hortons coffee
e. President’s Choice cookies
f. Volkswagen’s new Beetle

2. The text states that, among the four components of brand equity (brand awareness, perceived quality, brand associations, and brand loyalty), brand loyalty is the “single most important aspect.” Why is brand loyalty the most important aspect of brand equity? Relatively speaking, how important are each of the other three components?

3. Brand loyalty can be measured in three stages: brand familiarity, brand preference, and brand insistence. Explain these three stages in your own words. Illustrate your explanation of each stage with examples based on your personal level of loyalty to products such as regular Coca-Cola soft drink and McDonald’s hamburgers.

4. According to the Brand Utility Yardstick employed by the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, a brand has a very loyal following of customers if 48% refuse to switch even if a 50 percent cost savings is available from generic products. Discuss (a) whether this suggests that approximately 50% of a brand’s customers will never reach the brand insistence stage of loyalty, and (b) the implications for marketing planning of having customers with varying levels of loyalty.

5. Product image and brand image are related concepts with product image being the more general term. Explain what these two types of images are and why it is important for marketers to distinguish between them.

6. Table 10.1 summarizes the managerial implications of the four basic categories of consumer products (convenience, preference, shopping, and specialty). The text also notes that there is a fifth category, unsought goods, which includes products such as funerals and life insurance that people generally do not think of buying without some prompting or reminder to do so. Complete Table 10.1 by adding a column summarizing the managerial implications of unsought goods.

7. There are five categories of business goods (installations, accessory equipment, component parts and materials, raw materials, and supplies). This supplements the less complex categorization introduced in chapter 9 (capital items and expense items). Which of the five categories of business goods discussed in chapter 10 are capital items and which are expense items?
   

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