Performance And Functionality Of Marketing Assessment Answer

Marketing Management

Respond to the items below-
Part A: With Products, Is It Form or Function?
Part B: Is the Right Price a Fair Price?

The product, Is It Form or Function?

In terms of marketing, the product is anything that can be offered to a market that satisfies a need or want of the customer. The product can be a service or item. It can be virtual or physical.
Take a position: product functionality is the key to brand success versus product design is the key to brand success.
Product function or its design and appearance both have an impact on making a Brand success. For a successful brand, both a good appearance and remarkable performance is needed.For example, think of the Toyota Corolla and Honda Civic, I pick performance and functionality over its design or looks.
According to me, product functionality plays a vital role in making any brand a great success. Product functionality is the ability of the product to function in the way it is expected to perform.
The core objective of a product of a company is to satisfy the customer wants and needs. The behavior of the customer to make purchase decision heavily depends on the needs, wants and what they expect from the product. So the customer will repeat the decision of buying the product which has full filled their needs and wants and functioned according to the customer expectation (Kohli et al., 1978). Therefore, the product must function to an acceptable level that is expected from the customers according to their perception of needs. In my opinion, product design is the second element that contributes to the brand success. Product design may contribute to the status, self-actualization and social standards of the consumers. But it is of no value if the products fail in their basic functionalities. Product design can be considered only as an additional benefit to the consumers only if it achieves its basic functionality level. If the product performed according to the customer perception, then the customer will be satisfied, and he will repeat the purchase decision. In the same way if product function according to customer expectation then the customer will become loyal towards that particular brand and product. Although product packaging and design also play an important role in making brand success as the customer may get attracted towards packaging and design and they can easily recognize the brand through packaging and design of the particular product or brand. But if its performance is not up to the customer expectation then the customer will not buy that particular brand next time. So the main thing or the core objective is to make sure that your brand meets the expectation of your customer in a way to get your brand success (Herbig et al., 1995). The customer should feel that this brand is for them they should feel the personal connection with brand and this can only be done when brand meets or surpass the perception of customer in regards to performance and the end it will create brand loyalty which in return leads to brand success (Matzler et al., 1998).

Is the Right price a Fair price?

No, of course regarding economies there is something called externalities which have both positive as well as negative. Thus they will influence true value of the commodity. A fair price is a price which is set by market demand and supply (Reinecke et al., 2015).
In my opinion, prices should reflect the value consumers are willing to pay. Because consumers will be ready to pay for your product according to the perceived value they get from your product.There are some products whose cost of production may be same, but the value they provide to the consumers differ.So, the consumer will pay the amount if his perceived value of the product is high, irrespective of its cost of production.Because at last customer satisfaction is more important than price (Terpstra et al., 2014).Consumers will be willing to pay a high price for a product if the value they get from it is high.

Prices should reflect the value that consumers are willing to pay". In today’s world, a consumer plays a major concern to retailers when it comes to price setting (Nagle et al., 2016). Nowadays retailer is fixing the prices according to the consumer abilities to pay. Because the consumer is the king in the market and consumer satisfaction is the prime motto. If the consumer is satisfied with the price and product, then he or she will repeat the decision of buying that product. A major concern is making the consumer satisfied with the price as well as with product. By making consumer satisfied long existence can be maintained in the market.

Reference

Kohli, U. R. (1978). A gross national product function and the derived demand for imports and supply of exports. Canadian Journal of Economics, 167-182.
Herbig, P., & Milewicz, J. (1995). The relationship of reputation and credibility to brand success. Journal of consumer marketing, 12(4), 5-11.
Matzler, K., & Hinterhuber, H. H. (1998). How to make product development projects more successful by integrating Kano's model of customer satisfaction into quality function deployment. Technovation, 18(1), 25-38.
Reinecke, J., & Ansari, S. (2015). What is a “fair” price? Ethics as sensemaking. Organization Science, 26(3), 867-888.
Nagle, T. T., Hogan, J., & Zale, J. (2016). The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing: New International Edition. Routledge.
Terpstra, M., & Verbeeten, F. H. (2014). Customer satisfaction: cost driver or value driver? Empirical evidence from the financial services industry. European Management Journal, 32(3), 499-508.