What is a ‘Product’

According to Wikipedia a Product is ‘In marketing, a product is an object or system made available for consumer use; it is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy the desire or need of a customer. In retailing, products are often referred to as merchandise, and in manufacturing, products are bought as raw materials and then sold as finished goods. A service is also regarded to as a type of product.‘

So what does that all mean?

The way we at Business Growth and Innovation view the term ‘product’ is that it is either the main deliverable from your company or the thing customers interact with. We often call this the Offering as it is a very broad concept, but an important one to get started with.

Why the double-barreled definition?

The reason for our double-barreled definition is that you may be something without a typical customer like ‘the Army’ which deliver security but you don’t have customers interact with you at this top level. The Army is made up of many groups and those groups may have customers. For example, if you join the Army you may work on a frontline squad or in intelligence miles away from the frontline. The intelligence work has customers (the frontline squads and the higher-ups). The intellegance team must understand what the customers’ needs are and deliver the product (information) in the best way possible.

Delivering the product in the best way possible involves asking your customers what they consider to be the best way possible, then trying to assemble that information and deliver something as close as possible to that. This is the role of a Product Manager.

My company does site safety inspections (services) – how does ‘Product’ relate to us?

As the Wikipedia definition mentions, Services are products as well. In many cases caring about the customer is more important as a customer can’t just send back a faulty safety inspection after an incident the way a physical product can often be returned if it breaks.

We are a software company – do we do ‘Product’?

In the software industry, the Product is the software your make. But you shouldn’t just add more features and functions into software or you will end up with a mess that customers do not want to use any more. You should consider were the software and it’s features are on the Product Lifecycle (Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline). You need to know what customers are looking wanting and what they currently use. This allows you to figure out how to change your product to get more customers.

We make furniture – how does ‘Product’ fit with that?

If you make a physical thing to sell it is often naturally called a Product. It is very similar to the software company example above, in that you wouldn’t keep making large dining tables if people are moving more to apartments (unless you specialise in large dining room tables).

How can Business Growth and Innovation help?

We can help create or review your product offerings and their strategic growth plan for your business. We have two offerings; the first is we can create a Product Strategy (market and competitor analysis, risks, growth opportunities) or we can do ongoing Virtual Product Management with your where you get the Product Strategy and someone to help keep the focus on implementation for the growth of your business.