What is a product? What are the three levels of a product?

What will be an ideal response?

A product is anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that might satisfy a want or need. Products include more than just tangible objects, such as cars, computers, or cell phones. Broadly defined, products also include services, events, persons, places, organizations, and ideas, or a mixture of these. The three product levels are core customer value, actual product, and augmented product.

The most basic level is the core customer value, which addresses the question: What is the buyer really buying? When designing products, marketers must first define the core, problem-solving benefits or services that consumers seek.

At the second level, product planners must turn the core benefit into an actual product. They need to develop product and service features, a design, a quality level, a brand name, and packaging.

Finally, product planners must build an augmented product around the core benefit and actual product by offering additional consumer services and benefits.