1)Volvo is a well-known quality manufacturer of cars, trucks, and SUVs. Volvo dealers also provide financing to their customers. These products and services are part of Volvo’s product _____________.

Product mix is the combination of all product lines offered by a manufacturer. The cars, trucks, SUVs, and financing services that Volvo offers are the product lines that make up Volvo’s product mix.

2. Which of the following would be considered a convenience good?

Convenience goods and services are products that the consumer wants to purchase frequently and with a minimum of effort such as a candy bar.

3. Products that the consumer buys only after comparing value, quality, price, and style from a variety of sellers are known as ____________ goods and services.

Shopping goods and services are products the consumer buys only after comparing the value, quality, price, and style from a variety of sellers.

 4. Products that the consumer purchases like insurance, burial services, or emergency car-towing are known as ___________ goods and services because they are not products that consumers regularly evaluate and consider purchasing.

Unsought goods and services are products the consumer is unaware of, hasn’t necessarily thought of purchasing, or suddenly needs to solve an unexpected problem. These products include emergency car-towing services, burial services, and insurance, for example.

5. Fountain of Youth Tea Company changed their glass bottles to streamlined thermos-like, blue sports bottles that fit nicely on bicycles and in car holders. A packaging innovation such as this could actually be perceived by the buyer as a _____________.

Innovations in packaging and major changes in packaging can change the product in consumers’ minds. This can include positioning the product as new in the eyes of the consumer.

6. New packaging technology that allows companies to track products through radio frequency identification is referred to as ____________.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) chips, when attached to products, send out signals telling a company where the products are at all times. The advantages of RFID chips over bar codes include that the chips can carry more information, items don’t have to be read one at a time, and items can be read at a distance.

7. Priceline and Expedia are two online travel companies. Both are known to utilize ___________ of services such as airline flights and hotel stays to entice customers to purchase both at the same time, for a more reasonable price than what they would pay separately for each of these services.

Bundling combines goods and/or services for a single price.

8. A survey company used a dollar value to measure the ___________ of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, as compared to some of its worthy competitors. Essentially, the survey firm evaluated Ben and Jerry’s by measuring net value of several components that would comprise the brand’s perception and image to ice cream customers.

Brand equity is the value of the brand, usually measured by a monetary amount.

9. Rollerblade is working to make sure that when people refer to inline skating, they don’t use the name Rollerblade to refer to the sport. Rollerblade is afraid that their brand name will become a:

A generic name is the name for a whole product category. Companies like Rollerblade and Xerox work hard to protect their brand names from becoming generic names. Such products as aspirin and zippers used to be private brands before they became generic.

10. The process of taking a product idea to consumers to test their reactions is known as:

Concept testing takes a product idea to consumers to test their reactions.

11. Most new-product ideas come from:

Interestingly, employees are a major source for new consumer-goods ideas and more new ideas for industrial products come from employee suggestions instead of research and development teams.

12. Differentiating your product so that it will appeal to additional market segments occurs most often at which stage of the product life cycle?

When a product is in the maturity stage of the product life cycle, one strategy is to differentiate the product to satisfy a greater number of market segments.

13. The importance of the product life cycle is that:

Different stages in the product life cycle require different marketing strategies.

14. Sony and other makers of high-definition television sets have made the prices of these products more competitive, have increased the number and kinds of stores in which they are available, have offered a variety of choices, and are advertising extensively. These products appear to be in the ___________stage of the product life cycle.

When a product is in the growth stage of the product life cycle, strategies include making prices more competitive, increasing distribution and advertising, and improving the product.

15. The purpose of the product life cycle is it serves as a(n) __________.

Different stages in the product life cycle call for different marketing strategies. The product life cycle can provide insight regarding future market changes. Usually, the marketing manager will re-evaluate the marketing mix as the stage of the product’s life cycle changes.

16. Schnucks Supermarket promotes products like milk, eggs and other daily essentials at very low prices in order to attract consumers into their stores. This type of pricing strategy would be an example of using pricing to:

Supermarkets often advertise certain products (loss leaders) at or below costs to attract people to the store.

17. When Panasonic considers how to price a new product, they determine what price they think their customers will pay, and then identify what profit the company needs. From there they determine the features they can offer on this product. This method of determining price is known as:

Target costing is demand-based. That means designing a product so that it satisfies customers and meets the profit margins desired by the company.

18. If fixed costs are $100,000, variable cost per unit is $40, and the selling price is $60, how many units must be sold for the firm to break even?

The break-even point is total fixed costs divided by the price of one unit minus variable costs of one unit. In this case, 100,000 is divided by 20 which equals 5,000 units need to be sold.

19. When Nintendo reentered the video game market with the Wii, they priced the product lower than the newest Sony Playstation system in order to capture a large share of the market quickly. This strategy is called a:

A penetration strategy enables a company to penetrate or capture a large share of the market quickly by using a low-price strategy.

20. Upscale retailers, such as Nordstrom, feature customer service as their significant point of difference and use that difference to compete with less expensive stores. This is known as ___________ competition.

Nonprice competition emphasizes product attributes other than price. Many larger companies often compete with superior service. This is the case with Nordstrom.