Product: The Online Offer

Customer Value = Benefits - Cost

Some companies use the internet as a way to introduce a new product or a new product line, whether they be under the company's name, or whether a company creates a new company name for their product. And some companies simply use the internet as a new distribution channel for their existing products.

When it comes to the product and the internet, companies must create customer value. Some ways in which a company can do this are:

1. Product benefits: Benefits are what the customer will get out of using a product or service. Product benefits include attributes (overall quality of the product, and specific features), branding (identifying features of the brand) to legally protect the brand, and brand equity (the intangible value of the brand, usually measured in dollars).

2. Co-branding: An extension of branding and product benefits, this is when two companies work together and put both their names on a product or services. This helps draw in consumers who are loyal users of either brand, collectively bringing in a larger market for the product or service.

3. Product Strategies: When using online marketing, companies must decide how they want to handle their product mix strategies. They have six options:

• Discontinuous Innovation - This strategy involves new to the world products that have never been seen before.
• New Product Lines - This is when companies take an existing brand name and create new products in a completely different category.
• Additions to Existing Product Lines - Here, companies simply introduce new products to current product lines.
• Improvements/Revisions to existing Products - This is when companies introduce products as "new and improved." They replace the old version of the product.
• Repositioned Products - Current products that are targeted to a different market or promoted for new uses.
• Me-too lower-cost products - These products are introduced to compete with existing brands by offering a price advantage.

By doing any, some, or all of the above things, companies can create value for their brands that will help draw in new and existing customers.