Creating Product Identification

Firms could not succeed in developing and managing products without effectively identifying their products. Consumers must be able to distinguish one product from another. Organizations identify their offerings in three important ways: branding, packaging, and labeling.

Regardless of what type of product a company produces, it may want to create a brand identity by using a unique name or design that sets the product apart from those offered by competitors. Brand names may be owned by wholesalers and retailers as well as by producers of a product. Brands owned by national manufacturers are called national brands.

Brand marks and trademarks have existed for centuries. In medieval Europe trade guilds required tradesmen to “mark” each of their products to document its source. But long before brick makers in ancient Egypt used symbols to identify their bricks. Brand names first appeared in sixteenth century, when whiskey distillers burned their names in the top of each barrel to alert consumers to the source of the product and to prevent substitution with cheaper products. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries branding took on broader purposes. Names or pictures of places, famous people, or animals were used as brand names to increase memorability and to differentiate products.

Brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s goods or service as distinct from those of other sellers. The brand name is that part of a brand that can be spoken – letter, numbers, or words. The brand mark, or logo, is that part of a brand name that cannot be spoken and is most commonly a symbol, picture, design, colour, or a combination of these. It is recognizable by sight but is not pronounceable. A trademark is a legal term meaning the same as brand.

Today the primary objectives of branding remain much the same and a major purpose of advertising is to enhance the degree of familiarity – the level of awareness of a product by any given person. A product may be unrecognized by a customer (it means “I’ve never heard of brand A”), recognized (I’ve heard of Brand A), rejected (I wouldn’t buy Brand A), accepted (I’d buy Brand A), preferred (I like Brand A better than any other brand), or insisted on (I always buy Brand A)

As an alternative to branded products, some retailers also offer generic products, which are packaged in plain containers that bear only the name of the product. These products are most often standard rather than first quality. They cost up to 40 percent less than brand-name products because of uneven quality, plain packaging, and lack of promotion.

Brand names and brand symbols may be registered with the Patent and Trademark Office as trademarks. A trademark is a brand that has been given legal protection so that its owner has exclusive rights to its use. A well-known name is a valuable asset and generates more sales that an unknown name that’s why manufacturers zealously protect their trademarks.

Packaging involves designing a product container that will identify the product, protect it, and attract the attention of buyers. It is important to both consumers and manufacturers. The food and beverage industries alone spend $35 billion each year to package products; the sum represents 9 cents of every dollar spent on those products.

Manufacturers communicate with buyers through labeling. The label is the part of the package that identifies the brand and provides essential product information regarding contents, size, weight, quantity, ingredients, directions for use, shelf life, and any other hazards or dangers of improper use.

Labels also provide the means for automatic checkout and inventory monitoring. The universal product code (UPC), an electronic bar code on labels that identifies manufacturers and products, enables supermarkets and other stores to use computerized scanners at the checkout counter.

Say whether the following setements are true or false. Correct the false ones.

1.Firms can easily succeed in developing products without identifying their products.

2. There are two ways to identify their offerings^ branding and labeling.

3.Brand marks and trademarks appeared only some 100 years ago.

4.The brand name is that part of a brand that cannot be spoken.

5.A trademark doesn’t mean the same as brand.

6.The primary objective of branding today is the enhance the degree of familiarity.

7.There is no alternative to branded products.

8.A trademark is a brand that has been given legal protection.

9.Packaging is important only to consumers.

10.Labels provide the means fro automatic checkout and inventory monitoring.

Look through the text once again and ask 10-12 questions about the text.

Language

1. Ptactise reading the following words correctly. If necessary, use a dictionary.

Purchase, merchandise, resources, collaborators, consume, consumption, require, tangible, efficiency, manufacturer, standardized, intermediary, quality, quantity, maturity, competitive, technology, logo, valuable, package

2. Reproduce the context the following words and word-combinations are used in.

Standard products, custom goods (text 1), the measure of productivity, defer purchases, bundle of benefits, input-transformation-output system (text 2), a vast middle ground (text 3), productivity, grade and quality, test a few samples, commercialization (text 4), launch a new product, maturity stage (text 5), create a brand identity, communicate through labeling (text 6).

3.Read the following words. In a certain situation they can be used as synonyms. In what do they differ? Give your own examples

a) product, output, goods, merchandise, consignment, commodity

b) distinguish, differentiate, identify, characterize, determine, discriminate

c) consumer, client, buyer, purchaser, customer

4.Read the passage attentively. There are some implanted words in it. What are they?

J I T Logic

JIT (just-in-time) is an integrated green set of activities designed to achieve profound high-volume production using minimal maximum inventories of raw materials, work in process, and finished goods. Parts arrive at the following next workstation “just-in-time’ and are across completed and move through the operation quickly. JIT demands high quantity levels of quality at each stage of the beautiful, process, strong clever vendor relations, and a fairly predictable cherry demand for the end product. JIT can be well viewed as “big JIT” and “little JIT”. Big JIT is the boring philosophy of operations management that annually seeks to eliminate waste in all narrow aspects of a firm’s production activities: human relations, vendor relations, future technology, and the management of raw inventories and materials. Little JIT focuses more narrowly plus on scheduling goods inventories and providing service resources where and when needed.

Read the passage once again and explain in your own words what “just-in-time” means.

5. Work with a good dictionary to be sure you know the meaning of the following word expressions. Think of the situations where you could use them.

Make the best of; make a decision; make profit; make money; make a clean breast; make a clean sweep; make a day (night) of it; make good; make the most of it; make much (little) of; make a name for oneself; make no bones about; make or break; make a price; make one’s way

6.Match the explanations

7. Read the words given below. Be sure you know their meaning. Fill in the gaps with these words. Mind your grammar.

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