With the growth of tooth whitening companies, more and more market opportunities will be found. Any company has the desire to become bigger and stronger, and it is inevitable to expand its product line.
However, when expanding the tooth whitening product line, products are often developed based on the original idea of a single product, and the lack of structured thinking about the product line planning will cause a lot of trouble for the follow-up operation of the company.
Isn’t there a diversification strategy in marketing theory? Why do we bother to plan the product line? Mainly when there are too many product lines or confusion, the following phenomena often occur.
Bad things happen when your product lines are complicated
1. Too many product lines
Some surveys show that in the same category, consumers can remember no more than 3 brands, and when prompted, only about 7 can be identified. What’s more, the marketing department may not be able to figure out its own product line.
2. Conflicts in dental product lines
Second, there are serious conflicts in dental product lines. Some are too close in terms of function and price, sharing the market in the same piece of cake, wasting resources; some overlapping channels, competing for terminal resources.
3. Weaken the image of the parent brand
Many companies’ new products often hope to take advantage of the parent brand to open up the market, but they don’t know that the selling points and image design of many product lines conflict with the parent brand (too many product lines are often inevitable), which ultimately dilutes the parent brand’s assets.
4. Lack of product life cycle management
Fourth, there is a lack of product life cycle management. Most companies like to launch new products, but when it comes to old products, they worry that their total sales will be affected or that they lack motivation due to evaluation factors.
5. Insufficient attention is paid to financial indicators
Fifth, insufficient attention is paid to financial indicators. Although not every product line exists for profit, it is necessary to establish a financial mechanism centered on the product line. When planning a product line, it is necessary to comprehensively consider cost, profit and market prospects. Don’t miss the market, but don’t just consider the production cost and ignore the marketing cost of the product. Before product line planning, you need to determine the company’s positioning or core mission. This determines the boundaries of enterprise expansion. If this is uncertain, the more products a company has, even if it brings about the rapid development of the company, it will also bring deeper and deeper confusion.
Consider whether the product line to be introduced matches the company’s capabilities
Here can be subdivided into several questions to think about:
1. If we do not make this product and other companies do, will it pose a threat to the future development of the company?
2. Is there any synergy between the new product line we are introducing and the company’s existing business?
3. To introduce this product line, what resources and capabilities need companies to match?
Conclusion
To sum up, the lack of product line planning will lead to brand confusion, product lines conflict with each other, and finally lead to the deterioration of financial indicators.
We can plan the product line through the following steps:
1. Determine the mission and positioning of the enterprise;
2. The matching of the new product line and the company’s capabilities;
3. Define product categories;
4. Define brand ownership;
5. Define the operating attributes of the product.
6. Repeat the above steps periodically.
