All production and operation activities of an enterprise are carried out around products, that is, the development goals of the enterprise are achieved by providing the products that consumers need in a timely and effective manner. What products does the enterprise produce? For whom do they produce products? How many products do they produce? These seem to be questions of economic propositions, but in fact they are questions that must be answered by the product strategy of the enterprise. How can an enterprise develop products that meet the needs of consumers and deliver them to consumers quickly and effectively constitute the main body of the enterprise’s marketing activities.
What is a product? This is a non-problem, because enterprises are developing, producing and selling products all the time, and consumers are using, consuming and enjoying products all the time. However, with the rapid development of science and technology, the continuous progress of society, the increasingly personalized characteristics of consumer demand, the deepening and widening of market competition, the connotation and extension of products are also expanding.
Philip Kotler defines products in a modern sense. Products refer to everything provided to the market for attention, acquisition, use or consumption to meet certain desires and needs. In network marketing, products can be divided into five levels:
The first level is the core benefit level, which refers to the basic utility or benefit that the product can provide to consumers, which is the basic utility or benefit that consumers really want to buy;
The second level is the tangible product, which refers to the specific material form of the product when it appears on the market;
The third level is the expected product level, when consumers are in a dominant position;
The fourth level is the extended product level, which refers to the value-added service of the product;
The fifth level is the potential product level, which refers to the product level provided by the enterprise to meet the potential needs of consumers outside the extended product level.