**3.3. Product differentiation**

Successful product management cannot be achieved without product differentiation which is a process of designing and formulating unique and meaningful features that provides an identity around company's products. Differentiation can be built around goods or services such as automobiles, furniture, designer shoes, bags, and healthcare services. The aim is to make the target market identify and recognize the difference. If the market perceives no difference between two competing products, then the only possible means of competition is through pricing. In a situation such as this, products are viewed by customers as very easy substitutes for one another.

Products can be differentiated through many different ways. This differentiation may for example take the form of different packaging, marketing and product features, performance, conformance, durability, reliability, reparability, style, and design [2]. As long as a business can come up with a creative way to differentiate its product or service, gaining a competitive advantage is possible.

#### **3.4. Other product management strategies**

Apart from the life cycle product management strategies, companies also have an array of specific product strategies to use in managing their product assortments. These, products include, among others, the following:


products that are considered a unit because of marketing, technical, or end-use considerations. In other words, a product line consists of a set of brands that are closely related due to the similar functions they perform, they are sold to the same customer groups, use the same channel of distribution or fall within the same price range [4]. For instance, a personal computer is one product line. An example of a product mix and product line width, length,

A company's product mix has a certain width, depth, and consistency. The width of a product mix refers to how many different product lines the company carries. In the table, Jaiz Bank has four lines of services. Product mix depth is the total number of product items under each line. In **Table 1**, the depth of retail banking line is 11 different services. While the consistency is the degree to which all the products in the mix are related in one or the other. This may be in terms of the market being served, distribution channel used, or common production processes. All the services of Jaiz Bank are consistent in their banking focus. Companies normally develop a basic platform and modules that can be added to meet different customer requirements. This modular approach enables the company to offer variety

Successful product management cannot be achieved without product differentiation which is a process of designing and formulating unique and meaningful features that provides an identity around company's products. Differentiation can be built around goods or services such as automobiles, furniture, designer shoes, bags, and healthcare services. The aim is to make the target market identify and recognize the difference. If the market perceives no difference between two competing products, then the only possible means of competition is through pricing. In a situation such as this, products are viewed by customers as very easy

Products can be differentiated through many different ways. This differentiation may for example take the form of different packaging, marketing and product features, performance, conformance, durability, reliability, reparability, style, and design [2]. As long as a business can come up with a creative way to differentiate its product or service, gaining a competitive

Apart from the life cycle product management strategies, companies also have an array of specific product strategies to use in managing their product assortments. These, products

depth, and consistency for Jaiz Bank Nigeria is depicted in **Table 1**.

24 Product Lifecycle Management - Terminology and Applications

while lowering production costs.

**3.3. Product differentiation**

substitutes for one another.

advantage is possible.

**3.4. Other product management strategies**

**i.** Limited versus full-line product strategy

include, among others, the following:

**ii.** Line filling strategy

**iv.** Line modernization

**iii.** Line stretching strategy

	- **ix.** Planned product obsolescence
	- **x.** Product deletion strategy

**Limited versus full-line strategy**: As the name implies, this strategy simply deals with a company's decision to carry few or many product lines in its portfolio. Small scale enterprises (SMEs) and micro enterprises, for example, manage few products or even one product item based on their size. Companies like Procter and Gamble, Unilever, and Dangote Group carry many product lines and product assortments which make it very complex to manage than just few line or brands. However, it should be noted that companies should not put their eggs in one basket by offering one brand or few lines; rather, they should spread their risks by expanding their product lines.

**Line filling**: Line filling means adding products to fill a gap in the existing line. It is the process of lengthening the product mix by adding more items within the present range. Reasons for line filling may include getting incremental profits, maintaining dealers who complain about lost sales because of missing items in the line, utilizing excess capacity, becoming a leading fullline company and to keep competitors away. To achieve this, a company can introduce flanker products to protect the main brand from competitors. For example, Nestle Foods Nigeria Plc. has introduced different flavors of Maggi to give protection to Maggi star brand like Maggi chicken, Maggi crayfish, Maggi beef, Maggi pepper soup, etc. However, care should be taken not to introduce a product that will kill or cannibalize the existing product. Charles Schewe argues that the introduction of Classic Coke has cannibalized the sales of regular Coke [13].

**Line stretching**: This occurs when a company lengthens its product line beyond its current range. This is a frequent measure taken by companies to enter new price slots and to cater for new market segments. The product may be stretched by the addition of new models, sizes, variants, etc. For example, Toyota car comes in different models and brand names such as Carina, Corolla, Camry, Yaris, Prius, and Mirai in order to serve different customer segments. A company can choose to trade up or trade down. Trading up is a situation in which a company known for marketing low priced product will add a high quality brand sold at higher price. For example, Volkswagen traded up from Beetle to Arteon model to serve the upper class. Trading down, on the other hand, is a strategy by which a company that is positioned in the upper market may decide to introduce a lower price line. A company can adopt this strategy to exploit strong growth opportunities in the lower market segment, tie-up lowerend competitors so that they do not move up-market or move out of a stagnating market.

**Line modernization**: Product lines need to be modernized continuously. Companies plan improvements to encourage customer migration to higher-valued, higher-priced items. For instance, Microsoft has upgraded its Windows operating system from Windows 7 to Windows 8, XP, Vista, and Windows 10.

**Line featuring**: The product-line manager selects one or few items in the line to feature. Sometimes, a company finds one end of its line selling well and the other end selling poorly. Then, the company may try to boost demand for the low-selling ones that are threatened with extinction due to lack of demand.

Standardization, on the other hand, is a complete contrast to the customized strategy by which a standard product is produced to serve a homogeneous market worldwide. When there is a convergence of needs due to consumer behavior or socio-economic similarities, a product can be produced to serve these markets anywhere in the world. For example, sporting equipment and products and services such as club jerseys, boots of EUFA Champions league matches are sold to customers all over the world without any modification. Similarly, Sony uses the same packaging across several countries for its Play station product; Coca-Cola has prevailed successfully in the global market while Emirate Airlines adopts the same marketing strategy

Product Development and Management Strategies http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.80345 27

**Planned obsolescence**: Obsolescence occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order. Obsolete is something that is already disused or discarded, or antiquated. Therefore, planned obsolescence is a deliberate strategy which a company employs to purposefully make a product outdated or non-functional within a set period of time, so that customers have to buy a new one. A good example of this is the lifespan of a light bulb which does not lasts longer; one has to keep buying more and more. For planned obsolescence to work, the customer must feel that he has value for money from using

Planned obsolescence is a business strategy in which the life of a product is designed and built into it from its conception. This is done so that in future the consumer feels a need to purchase new products and services that the manufacturer brings out as replacements for the old ones. For instance, fashion of any sort is deeply inclined to built-in obsolescence. Also, the strategy of planned obsolescence is common in the computer industry too. New software is often carefully developed to reduce the value of the previous version in the eyes of consumers. However, a strategy of planned obsolescence can backfire if a manufacturer produces

Planned obsolescence can be physical, functional, style, and technological obsolescence. Physical obsolescence is a situation in which a product becomes outdated due to the wear and tear of the product. Old products such as refrigerators, car tires, and clothes fall in this category. Functional obsolescence is a reduction in the usefulness or desirability of an object because of an outdated design feature, usually one that cannot be easily changed. Sometimes functional obsolescence is built in the product when designing it. For example, car or cell phone batteries, electric bulb, entry visa and spark plugs, among others. With regards to style obsolescence, whenever a product is no longer desirable to the customers because it has gone out of the popular fashion, its style is considered to be obsolete. It is principally a matter of esthetics and not one of performance or function. The periodic introduction of new models of cars by Honda and Toyota which renders the existing models out of fashion is an example of style obsolescence. While technological obsolescence occurs when a technical product or service is no longer needed or wanted even though it could still be in working order. Technological obsolescence generally occurs when a new product has been created to replace an older version as a result of technological development. For example, the introduction of computer and printer render manual typewriter obsolete, the same thing applies to digital camera and analog camera like Kodak, color and high definition television versus black and

new products to replace old ones too often, which leads to consumer resistance.

the product as well as having enough confidence on the company.

and services to serve its global markets.

white television, and so forth.

**Line pruning**: This is otherwise called line reduction. At times a company finds that over the years it has introduced many variants of a product in the product line probably because of the changing market situations which makes the product lines become unduly complicated with too many variants. So, when the products are not satisfactorily performing, the product managers need to drop them from the product line. This may lead to increased profitability due to cost reduction from promotion and other marketing expenses. Thus, line pruning is a well thought-out decision by the product manager to drop some product variants from the line.

**Product repositioning strategy**: First, positioning is the process of placing the product's functionality, relevance, or attributes in the minds of customers. Positioning helps to create a unique perception about a product in the minds of consumers such that a mere mentioning of that brand will evoke an association of quality or otherwise on the product. For example, Mercedes brand evokes good manufacture, McDonald's means quality fast food and snacks, and Singapore Airlines means responsive and reliable airline services. Therefore, a company may decide to reposition its products in order to serve another market segment thereby extending the product's life cycle. For example, Cadbury Nigeria Plc. initially positioned its Bournvita brand as food drink for future sporting champions. But today, it is repositioned as a food drink for child nourishment in their advert slogan "every child deserves nourishment, every child deserves Bournvita." So, repositioning is used in order to add value to the brand to enhance its marketability.

**Brand extension strategy**: Brand extension or brand stretching is a marketing strategy in which a firm marketing a product with a well-developed image uses the same brand name in a different product category [4]. Companies use this strategy to increase and leverage brand equity (which is the net worth and long-term value of the original brand name) to market a new business or product to a new customer market. An example of a brand extension is PZ's Venus brand which is used to create Venus Soap, Cream, lotion, powder, and hair relaxer. It increases awareness of the brand name and increases profitability from offerings in more than one product category. Another example is Dangote brand which is extended to Dangote cement, Dangote sugar, Dangote salt, Dangote flour, and Dangote transport.

**Product standardization versus customization in global market**: Customized and standardized marketing strategies are two opposing product management options in international marketing operation. In recent years, there has been an increased urge among local organizations to diversify their operations in the international market to enhance their revenues, competitiveness and global market share. This makes it essential for organizations to adopt international marketing strategies to guard them against foreign competition. Customization strategy is based upon the polycentric orientation of international marketing operation. This ideology holds that due to cultural and other differences among countries, marketing strategies should be tailor made for each country. This strategy is influenced by the differences in buyer behavior characteristics, socio-economic condition, and competitive environment.

Standardization, on the other hand, is a complete contrast to the customized strategy by which a standard product is produced to serve a homogeneous market worldwide. When there is a convergence of needs due to consumer behavior or socio-economic similarities, a product can be produced to serve these markets anywhere in the world. For example, sporting equipment and products and services such as club jerseys, boots of EUFA Champions league matches are sold to customers all over the world without any modification. Similarly, Sony uses the same packaging across several countries for its Play station product; Coca-Cola has prevailed successfully in the global market while Emirate Airlines adopts the same marketing strategy and services to serve its global markets.

**Line featuring**: The product-line manager selects one or few items in the line to feature. Sometimes, a company finds one end of its line selling well and the other end selling poorly. Then, the company may try to boost demand for the low-selling ones that are threatened with

**Line pruning**: This is otherwise called line reduction. At times a company finds that over the years it has introduced many variants of a product in the product line probably because of the changing market situations which makes the product lines become unduly complicated with too many variants. So, when the products are not satisfactorily performing, the product managers need to drop them from the product line. This may lead to increased profitability due to cost reduction from promotion and other marketing expenses. Thus, line pruning is a well thought-out decision by the product manager to drop some product variants from the line.

**Product repositioning strategy**: First, positioning is the process of placing the product's functionality, relevance, or attributes in the minds of customers. Positioning helps to create a unique perception about a product in the minds of consumers such that a mere mentioning of that brand will evoke an association of quality or otherwise on the product. For example, Mercedes brand evokes good manufacture, McDonald's means quality fast food and snacks, and Singapore Airlines means responsive and reliable airline services. Therefore, a company may decide to reposition its products in order to serve another market segment thereby extending the product's life cycle. For example, Cadbury Nigeria Plc. initially positioned its Bournvita brand as food drink for future sporting champions. But today, it is repositioned as a food drink for child nourishment in their advert slogan "every child deserves nourishment, every child deserves Bournvita." So, repositioning is used in order to add value to the brand

**Brand extension strategy**: Brand extension or brand stretching is a marketing strategy in which a firm marketing a product with a well-developed image uses the same brand name in a different product category [4]. Companies use this strategy to increase and leverage brand equity (which is the net worth and long-term value of the original brand name) to market a new business or product to a new customer market. An example of a brand extension is PZ's Venus brand which is used to create Venus Soap, Cream, lotion, powder, and hair relaxer. It increases awareness of the brand name and increases profitability from offerings in more than one product category. Another example is Dangote brand which is extended to Dangote

**Product standardization versus customization in global market**: Customized and standardized marketing strategies are two opposing product management options in international marketing operation. In recent years, there has been an increased urge among local organizations to diversify their operations in the international market to enhance their revenues, competitiveness and global market share. This makes it essential for organizations to adopt international marketing strategies to guard them against foreign competition. Customization strategy is based upon the polycentric orientation of international marketing operation. This ideology holds that due to cultural and other differences among countries, marketing strategies should be tailor made for each country. This strategy is influenced by the differences in buyer behavior characteristics, socio-economic condition, and competitive environment.

cement, Dangote sugar, Dangote salt, Dangote flour, and Dangote transport.

extinction due to lack of demand.

26 Product Lifecycle Management - Terminology and Applications

to enhance its marketability.

**Planned obsolescence**: Obsolescence occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer wanted even though it may still be in good working order. Obsolete is something that is already disused or discarded, or antiquated. Therefore, planned obsolescence is a deliberate strategy which a company employs to purposefully make a product outdated or non-functional within a set period of time, so that customers have to buy a new one. A good example of this is the lifespan of a light bulb which does not lasts longer; one has to keep buying more and more. For planned obsolescence to work, the customer must feel that he has value for money from using the product as well as having enough confidence on the company.

Planned obsolescence is a business strategy in which the life of a product is designed and built into it from its conception. This is done so that in future the consumer feels a need to purchase new products and services that the manufacturer brings out as replacements for the old ones. For instance, fashion of any sort is deeply inclined to built-in obsolescence. Also, the strategy of planned obsolescence is common in the computer industry too. New software is often carefully developed to reduce the value of the previous version in the eyes of consumers. However, a strategy of planned obsolescence can backfire if a manufacturer produces new products to replace old ones too often, which leads to consumer resistance.

Planned obsolescence can be physical, functional, style, and technological obsolescence. Physical obsolescence is a situation in which a product becomes outdated due to the wear and tear of the product. Old products such as refrigerators, car tires, and clothes fall in this category. Functional obsolescence is a reduction in the usefulness or desirability of an object because of an outdated design feature, usually one that cannot be easily changed. Sometimes functional obsolescence is built in the product when designing it. For example, car or cell phone batteries, electric bulb, entry visa and spark plugs, among others. With regards to style obsolescence, whenever a product is no longer desirable to the customers because it has gone out of the popular fashion, its style is considered to be obsolete. It is principally a matter of esthetics and not one of performance or function. The periodic introduction of new models of cars by Honda and Toyota which renders the existing models out of fashion is an example of style obsolescence. While technological obsolescence occurs when a technical product or service is no longer needed or wanted even though it could still be in working order. Technological obsolescence generally occurs when a new product has been created to replace an older version as a result of technological development. For example, the introduction of computer and printer render manual typewriter obsolete, the same thing applies to digital camera and analog camera like Kodak, color and high definition television versus black and white television, and so forth.

**Product deletion strategy**: Whenever a product is not performing and is not patronized by customers, it is a good candidate for deletion, i.e., deciding to remove or phase out the product from the market. The strategy for deletion can be instant or gradual depending on the fate of the product in the market. If it is consuming money without bringing any return, instant deletion is recommended. But if the product is still bringing some revenue to the company, it can be allowed to die gradually in order to harvest the remaining cash inflows. Alternatively, that product can be withdrawn from its existing market and introduced in another market to start its new life cycle.

or *shayi* in Hausa language anytime of the day. This opportunity is what attracted local and foreign brands such as Lipton (local and imported), Top tea, Tiger tea, Highland tea, Akbar, and Tea king to the Nigerian market. Another opportunity is the affordability of tea to the mass market. With your N5or N10 you can get one or two tea bags to quench your thirst for

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The market performance of city tea bag is very encouraging. The brand name of Dala city tea emanated from the famous Dala hill in the ancient city of Kano so, it is a well-known brand which made it easier for people to pronounce and remember. But the company did not relent; it launched Dala city tea with aggressive promotion through radio and Television Jingles. In addition, the company sponsored a popular TV Indian film show in the night. Little wonder then that the brand got massive acceptance and from 1980 to 1989 the sales and market share of Dala city grew steadily. Due to population growth and better disposable income, the demand for tea increased and from 1990 to 1999 down to 2010 the sales of Dala city tea made a significant move upward. Dala city tea brand can be considered to be in the growth maturity stage because the company is yet to meet the growing demand of tea in Kano in spite of the

Following the success of Dala tea, the company introduced instant *Kunun Tsamiya* to the market in 2001. Immediately, the sales of *Kunun Tsamiya*, a Hausa term for Tamarind millet gruel, started to grow and it follows the same trend and even better than that of Dala tea. This is because of the unique nature of the product, and unlike city tea, *Kunun tsamiya* has no identified competitor in the market apart from local unhygienic products from informal businesses that are inherently insignificant. Another key characteristic of Dala's *Kunun tsamiya* is it brings succor to housewives from the chore of dehusking, winnowing, and grinding of millet in the process of making local *Kunun tsamiya*. This process takes more than 5 h to finish in the traditional method, but with instant *Kunu*, the difficulty has been reduced to just 5–10 min! That is why at present, Dala Foods could not adequately meet the demand of the product. This brand

Similarly, the company introduced Diet *Kunu* to serve the market segment of those with diabetics. This is quite innovative and timely because of the sizeable number of diabetic patients in Kano who are largely old and incidentally, consumers of traditional *Kunu*. Diet Kunu is its infancy stage but its demand is increasing due to the rise in the number of diabetic patients in the region. In general, we can confidently say that instant *Kunu* is swimming in blue ocean waters as the only brand of its type in Nigeria presently. Other brands produced and marketed by the company are Instant *Fura* (cooked ground millet) and instant Biski (local couscous). All these brands are adapted household names of some traditional food and beverages

Moreover, Dala Foods produces another food product called Action Meal – a food supplement for malnourish patients formulated by Institute of Human Virology, Nigeria (IHVN) and processed from Maize, Soya beans and Groundnut on contracts for other global organizations. The company has benefited from those contract productions in form of increased sales turnover and revenue, gaining more experience in other grains processing and availability of readymade market niche (malnourished children) and easy access to foreign market through donor

is apparently in the introductory stage but moving into its growth stage.

that are difficult to prepare but made easy courtesy of Dala Foods.

a beverage drink.

increased influx of foreign tea brands.
