Ch. 10 - Product Concepts

The term marketing mix refers to a unique blend of product, place, promotion, and pricing strategies designed to produce mutually satisfying exchanged with a target market. The heart of the marketing mix, the starting point, is the product offering and product offering and product strategy.

Product may be tangible good or services. For Whole foods market, product sold in the market is tangible goods. There are different types of consumer product such as convenience products, shopping products, specialty products, and unsought products. The products in Whole Foods Market are convenience products because they are relatively inexpensive item that merit little shopping effort. People buy products such as foods and flowers in Whole Foods Market everyday without much planning.

Whole Foods Market sells variety kinds of product. In order to organize the product item well and make convenient for customers shopping in the market, Whole Foods Market uses the product line to classify products. For product mix width, the numbers of product lines in Whole Foods Market are organic vegetable, fruit, body care, and supplements. For product line depth, Whole Foods Market also provides different product items in products line. For example, the products in body care line in Whole Foods Market are lotion, shampoo, conditioner, and soap.

Branding is the vital tool marketer use to distinguish their product form the other competitors. For Whole Foods Market, they use the family brand because they market several products under the same brand name- Whole Foods. For example, Whole Foods Market markets bread, yogurt and beverage under the same brand – Whole Foods Market.

Moreover, Whole Foods Market also cares much about the package. As marketers, package makes an important role in the process of selling. Beautiful package is no doubt can attract more customers’ attention.  Whole Foods Market expands green packaging, beging with private lable. Whole foods markey has implementes new responsible packaging guidelines for its 2100 body care and supplements suppliers, and is leading the charge toward change by switching to post-consumer recycled content bottles for several of its store brand supplemnets and body care products.