In response to Bruce Wichland's Post...

"How do you feel? Do you come to expect certain things from certain brands? Do you prefer and insist on certain brands or are you open to anything?"

I agree with Bruce with the fact that many individuals grow up to appreciate one brand over another, and much of that may be due to the way in which you were raised. This brings up the idea of brand loyalty, a customer's favorable attitude toward a specific brand. Customer satisfaction with a brand is a huge requirement in order for that customer to remain "loyal" to your brand.

I believe that many individuals have preferences on what brands they buy. When shopping for shampoo, I rather purchase Biolage over Herbal Essence. Growing up, my family owned three Toyota vehicles, therefore I am now familiar with their products and would potentially want to shop for one myself someday. I do expect certain things from certain brands because if you are continually purchasing their brands, you expect to get positive attributes back from it. With the recent problems with Toyota, it has made me wonder if I should still remain loyal to their company or not. However, after such a positive track record for the past fifteen years with my family, one problem streak should not affect my perception of the last fifteen years of quality service with Toyota.

If you were in my families position with Toyota after owning three vehicles for the past fifteen years, would your perception of their company change after the recent problems they have been going through?

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?