Product Item, Product Line & Product Mix

It is important for marketers to understand the relationship among all the products of their organization in order to coordinate the marketing of the total group of products. A product item is a specific version of a product that can be designated as distinct offering among an organization's products. For example: Gillette has a razor called the M3 Power Nitro razor which is considered a product item for Gillette. A product line is a group of closely related products items that are considered a unit because of marketing, technical or end-use considerations. For example: Proctor & Gamble has hundreds of brands that fall into one of the twenty-two product lines ranging from deodorants to paper products.

The product mix deals with the total group of products that an organization makes available to customers. For example: all of Proctor & Gamble's health-care, beauty-care, laundry and cleaning, food and beverage, paper, cosmetic, an fragrance products constitutes its product mix. The width of the product mix is measured by the number of product lines the company offers. The depth of the product mix is the average number of different products offered in each product line.

After learning how important it is for a marketer to realize the relationships among an organization's products, think of a company in which you shop from that has a developed product mix and describe what their width and depth may look like. What do their product items and product lines consist of?