Most people when they are purchasing a product believe they are buying a tangible, physical entity. However, a product actually consists of at least three levels. When you start to understand this you can build more value in the product which helps support your unique selling proposition.
By understanding how to increase value into a product or service, you begin to understand how you don’t need to compete on price. Many new entrepreneurs believe that they need to be cheaper than their competitors to compete in a marketplace. There is nothing further from the truth. In fact, by increasing perceived value into a product means that you can increase the profit in a product. Afterall, that is the most important aspect of a business, making profit. Start ups are generally more successful when they compete on value and not price.
Percieved Value in Products
So? How do you build value into a product (or service)? Well, lets start by understanding how a product is made. There are three main aspects of a product, the core product, the actual product and the augmented product. So, lets try to better understand each one.
The Core Product
The core product is not the tangible product but is the ultimate benefit that the customer will receive when they purchase your product. Our core product that we sell is success. We give the opportunity for people to live the life they dream of. We help create a business asset and mould our product to support this. The core product of a car would be convenience and speed (giving you more time to do stuff you like doing). A car helps you get from A to B quicker and when you like. That is the main benefit of a car.
The Actual Product
The actual product is the physical product itself. The physical product that we sell is an eCommerce platform. It in itself offers features to help you save time and to improve exposure for your products for example. It also contains benefits in itself separate from the core product. The actual product allows you to get some form of use out of it and you can normally touch it. In an example of the car, it would be the car itself. The actual product itself is normally designed around a target market and solves a number of problems that target market has.
The Augmented Product
The augmented product is the non-tangible aspect of the product. This is the area of product where you can increase perceived value and therefore often centres around unique selling propositions. For example, you may be offering a premium service with excellent customer service. This is not part of the actual product itself but adds value to your customers experience of dealing with your brand.
Our augmented products are based around business strategy support and consultancy as well as fantastic knowledge of our industry. When people come to us for eCommerce they are normally committed to becoming successful and use us to help them become market leaders. We therefore choose to only work with remarkable companies.
In terms of a car, the augmented product would be the warranty and the post sales service. The augmented product allows you to better position your product or service to the right target market.
By understanding your customer you can therefore create a better product that they want and mould the product to position yourself in the market using a mixture of the three levels of product.
Good luck.