What Is a Product Concept?

Product concept, the main body is the product. When brand products launch a new product, they often design a concept for the new product to highlight the advantages of the product. For example, the "pure flat", "mirror" in color TV, the "dual frequency" and "surround wind" in air conditioners all directly remind the product's outstanding advantages, and these image "says" have become the biggest selling point of products.

Product concept

Product concept, the main body is the product. When brand products launch a new product, they often design a concept for the new product to highlight the advantages of the product. For example, the "pure flat", "mirror" in color TV, the "dual frequency" and "surround wind" in air conditioners all directly remind the product's outstanding advantages, and these image "says" have become the biggest selling point of products.

It can be said that the product concept is a subjective idea about products that companies want to inject into their customers' minds.

The product concept is essentially what is the point of interest for the product to be sold to consumers, that is, what is the point of demand for consumers. Any product has a reason for its existence. These reasons are because consumers have a certain demand for the benefits of the product. ^[1]

I. Traditional product concept ^[1]

New product ideas are some of the new product ideas that business innovators hope to provide to the market. New product ideas only point out the direction for new product development. New product ideas must be translated into new product concepts to truly guide the development of new products. The new product concept is a detailed description of the product idea from the perspective of the consumer. The new product concept will be concreteized, describing the product's performance, specific use, shape, advantages, appearance, price, name, benefits provided to consumers, etc., so that consumers can clearly identify the characteristics of the new product. Because consumers are not buying new product ideas, they are buying new product concepts. The process of forming a new product concept translates a rough product idea into a detailed product concept. Any product idea can be transformed into several product concepts. The formation of new product concepts comes from the answers to the questions raised about the new product concept. Generally, different new product concepts can be formed by answering the following three questions. That is, who uses the product? What are the main benefits provided by this product? Where is this product suitable?

Formulating a marketing strategy plan for a new product concept that has been formed is an important stage of the new product development process. The plan will be continuously improved in the later development stages. The marketing strategy plan includes three parts: The first part describes the size, structure, and consumer behavior of the target market, the positioning of new products in the target market, market share, and sales and profit targets in previous years. The second part is to plan the new product's price strategy, distribution strategy, and marketing budget for the first year. The third section describes the expected long-term sales volume and profit targets and the marketing mix over time.

The main content of business analysis is to analyze the financial aspects of the new product concept, that is, to estimate the sales volume, cost and profit, and determine whether it meets the company's goal of opening new products.

The development of new product entities mainly addresses the issue of whether product ideas can be translated into technically and commercially viable products. It is done through the design, trial production, testing and qualification of new product entities. According to the American Science Foundation survey, the investment and time required for the product entity development stage in the new product development process account for 30% of the total development cost and 40% of the total time, and the technical requirements are high, which is the most challenging A stage.

The purpose of the new product market trial sale is to test the new product before it is officially launched, and the evaluation of this test is the consumer's currency vote. Through market trial sales, new products are put into a small range of target markets in representative regions for testing, so that companies can truly understand the market prospects of the new products. The market test sale is a comprehensive test of new products, which can provide a comprehensive and systematic basis for decision-making whether new products are fully listed, and also provide inspiration for the improvement of new products and the improvement of marketing strategies. Successful. The first issue in the market trial of new products is to decide whether to test-market. Not all new products have to undergo test-marketing, which can be determined according to the characteristics of new products and the analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of new products. If you decide to test sales, the next step is to choose a test market. The selected test market should be as close as possible to the target market where the new product will eventually enter in terms of advertising, distribution, competition, and product use. The third step is the selection of trial marketing technologies. Common consumer product trial marketing technologies include sales wave testing, simulation testing, controlled trial marketing, and trial market trial marketing. Commonly used test marketing methods for industrial products are product use tests or introducing new products through commercial exhibitions. Controlling the process of new product trial sales is the fourth step. Controlling the effects of promotion and publicity, the cost of trial sales, the goals of the trial sales plan, and the timing of trial sales are the key points that trial sales personnel must grasp. The last is the collection and analysis of trial marketing information. For example, consumers trial and repurchase rates, competitors responses to new products, and consumer reactions to new product performance, packaging, prices, distribution channels, and promotions.

During the marketing operation of the commercialization of new products, enterprises should make careful decisions in the following aspects: when to launch new products. For competitors' products, there are three timing options. That is, first entry, parallel entry and later entry; where to launch new products; how to launch new products, companies must formulate detailed marketing plans for new product listings, including marketing mix strategies, marketing budgets, and organization and control of marketing activities.

The product concept requires that the product introduction to consumers be clear enough and attractive to consumers! The research on product concepts will provide the most basic decision-making reference for new product development, marketing strategy and communication strategy.

When we get as much technical and market information about the product as possible, based on the content structure of the product concept, we usually sit with many people in the company, carry out full brainstorming, and constantly think of one product concept after another . After some intense thinking and debate, there are generally several product concepts left on our conference whiteboards, and each one feels good. But the question that really makes sense is, which one is easy for our target consumers to understand and accept?

The initial product concept is often just a subjective combination of our product characteristics and consumer perceptions. We must get the attitudes of the target consumers towards these product concepts. In settings

After the product concept is good, it needs to be tested in consumers to help companies modify and enrich the content of the product concept. If there are several product concepts, the best one must be selected through testing.

Product concept testing is an effective research tool used to select and develop product concepts. Display a product concept or several alternative product concepts initially set by the enterprise in front of a group of target consumers, and use professional research methods and means to obtain their reflection.

Enterprise concepts, brand concepts and product concepts each have different characteristics and functions, but the three are interrelated and interact. Without knowing this, it is difficult for an enterprise to make the concept play its due marketing effect when designing the concept, and it will even give the public the feeling of showing things and playing virtual.

First of all, these three concepts are generalizations of certain characteristics of the subject, and they have their roots. For example, it is difficult for a tobacco manufacturing company to win the public's favor because of the concept of "environmental protection" and "healthy life"; for a low-end clothing manufacturing enterprise with backward technology and weak capital, its clothing brand concept is designed as a "sign of success "Is ridiculous; again, product concepts and product features or functions are not next to each other at all, that can only be deception.

Secondly, these three concepts all convey the subject's superiority information in a generalized, visual, and simple manner. All the concepts we saw were straightforward, straight to the theme and easy to understand. Because these concepts, especially the brand and product tax concepts, are primarily used for dissemination, these characteristics must support the requirement that probability be easily disseminated. On the contrary, if the design is cumbersome and advanced, it will be contrary to the original intention of conceptual design.

Third, because the true advantages of enterprises, brands, and products are transmitted in an appropriate way, these three concepts play a "pioneer" role in marketing, and are an effective contact between operators and consumers. , The first business card for communication. Consumers can also relatively accurately understand the core value of the concept subject through their perception of the concept.

We see that the differences between these three concepts are also obvious. Due to the different subjects, the functional division of concept has its own emphasis. For example, the corporate concept is a generalization of corporate development goals, which determines that it must be long-term strategic, constrain and guide the internal behavior of the enterprise, and have an impact on the corporate image of the public; the brand concept is directed at the brand connotation, The development direction of the brand is also used to shape the brand image and often focuses on the latter; the function of the product concept is much simpler, just to express a certain advantage of the product. On the other hand, because of this, the three concepts have the greatest coverage, and the design of the brand and product concepts must be consistent with them; on the contrary, the coverage of the product concept only focuses on a single product. Given the intuitive feeling, the concept of the enterprise has a broad extension, while the product concept has the smallest extension.

At the same time, we must realize that these three concepts are not broken and independent, but interconnected and interacting. The concept of a company has a guiding effect on the design of a brand concept by its covering power. In other words, the concept of a brand must be consistent with the message and spirit conveyed by the concept of a company; the same is true of the relationship between a brand concept and a product concept. In this way, the three concepts actually need to reflect consistent information from different angles and from different degrees. In turn, the dissemination of product concepts will strengthen the public's awareness of the brand concept, and thus become a powerful weapon for reshaping the brand concept. The same is true of the brand concept's reaction to the corporate concept. Only when the three concepts are organically combined and interacted can a kind of synergy be formed, which will eventually have an impact on the public.