ASSIGNMENT - 4

Subject: MARKETING MANAGEMENT

MATS UNIVERSITY, MATS LAW
SCHOOL

Assignment Allotment Date: 26
th
Aug, 2014
Assignment Submission Date: 01
st
Sep, 2014

Submitted To :
Ms. Anushree Bhattacharya
(Assistant Professor)

Submitted By :
Stuti Baradia
(Student)
BBA LLB, Sem 3 (2
nd
year)
Question:
Write a note on Tangible and Intangible product with
examples.

Synopsis:
Introduction
Marketing Mix
Product
Product: A part of the Marketing Mix
Product Mix
Product- defined with example
Product Classification
Tangible product- explained with example
Intangible product- explained with example
Selling the tangible & intangible (Marketing)
Conclusion

Introduction
In marketing, a product is anything that can be offered to a market that might satisfy a want or
need.
Marketers have four tools to use to develop an offering to meet the needs of their targeted
customers. Collectively they are called the marketing mix.
Marketing Mix: You may have heard of the "four Ps" of marketing: product, price, place,
and promotion. Collectively these are called the marketing mix. More comprehensively they are
viewed as:
product, service, or program - something of value you are offering the customer, client, or
park visitor
price - what the customer, client, or park visitor pays (direct costs are financial, indirect
or alternative costs are such things as time it takes and the things people give up if they
choose your offering)
place, distribution, location, or accessibility - where the transaction takes place, perhaps
in a park
promotion or communication - this is how you inform the target market about the benefits
in your marketing mix
Product: The product, service, or program includes both tangible and intangible elements. The
tangible, of course, are those things that the customer can see, touch, feel, taste, or smell. The
intangible include such things as the image of the offering ... which includes the image of the
organization making the offering, the psychological aspects of pricing (high price to many
customers is equated with high quality - and vice versa).


Product: A Part of the Marketing Mix
Product is actually a complex, multidimensional concept. It is defined broadly enough to include
services, programs, and attitudes and includes whatever you are offering the target market in an
effort to meet their needs. It involves all tangible and intangible aspects of the good or service
you offer your target market. These are things which have value and are balanced against the
value you expect to receive from the target consumer.
Product Mix: Every organization has a product mix that is made up of product lines. Product
lines contain product items. Each product item is a product or service as well as
the brand, package, and services associated with it.
Product
Any tangible or intangible good or service that is a result of a process and that is intended for
delivery to a customer or end user.
EXAMPLE
A soccer ball is an example of a tangible product.
An example of an intangible product is insurance.




Product Classification:
Products can be Tangible product and Intangible product
Definitions
A product can be classified as tangible or intangible. A tangible product is a physical object that
can be perceived by touch such as a building, vehicle, gadget, or clothing. An
intangible product is a product that can only be perceived indirectly such as an insurance
policy.
There are two types of products tangible and intangible. Although each of the two might
result in a satisfied customer, how to marketing and advertise each one are vastly different.
Tangible items are those we can see, touch, or smell. I can hold a DVD in my hand therefore
its a tangible item.
An intangible item is one I cant see. For example I can hold the life insurance papers in my
hand, but thats not what I bought. I bought protection for my family that I couldnt physically
see, touch, hear, taste, or smell.

Tangible Product

A tangible product is a physical object that can be perceived by touch such as a building, vehicle,
or gadget. Most goods are tangible products. For example, a soccer ball is a tangible product.
A tangible product is one that exists in space, one that you can perceive with your senses. It is an
object, as opposed to a service or an experience. Tangible products are created with materials.
Cheese is an example of a tangible food product, for example. It is created with physical
materials, including ingredients such as milk and rennet.
Tangible goods are physical products defined by the ability to be touched. They are distinct from
intangible goods, which may have value but are not physical entities. Goods that are tangible
play a large part in retail, though the purchasing of intangible goods is now widely available
through the Internet. They are also distinct from services, such as a spa treatment, since the result
of a service is not a tangible product.
Goods that are tangible include anything that can be physically touched, including things like
printed books, CDs and DVDs, lamps, groceries, and baseball bats. One of the easiest ways to
determine whether a good is tangible or not is to ask if a person could physically touch it or pick
it up. If the answer is yes, the good is tangible.
Digital files, though technically goods, are examples of intangible products. Downloaded video
games, applications, music files, or movies cannot physically be touched. Though they can be
bought and sold just as easily as tangible items, digital files are not inherently physical. If a
person buys music files and burns them onto a CD, however, he or she has created a tangible
product, the finished CD, from initially intangible goods.
One of the benefits of tangible products is that they are often easier to return and track than
intangible items. Returning a sweater to the store often requires only that the owner has not
damaged it and has kept the tags or receipt as proof of purchase. Returning an intangible good,
on the other hand, can be much more complicated.
If a person downloads a music file, the opportunity for return fraud is enormous, as there is no
way for the merchant to track whether the person has copied or burned the file before attempting
to return it. With traditional computers, it is also usually impossible for a merchant to remove a
file from a remote computer once it has been initially purchased or downloaded. For this reason,
intangible products often provide samples or free trial periods so that the buyer can be sure of
what he or she is purchasing.

Tangible goods may have the downside of requiring more initial cost. Creating a DVD, for
instance, requires not only the original files or film print, but also the cost of the disc, packaging,
shrink-wrapping, and shipping. Some items, such as groceries, may also have an expiration date,
making them valuable only for a short time. On the other hand, tangible products that do not
expire often have the chance to remain in the market longer, thanks to the ability to resell
second-hand goods.


Selling the Tangible
Remember that the tangible item is something I can touch or visualize. A car, fountain pen, sofa,
etc. I can evaluate these product based on visual comparisons and the benefits they provide. This
is the key to selling tangible products. People dont buy features they buy benefits. A feature is
something a product has such as a four door automobile. The four doors do not become a benefit
unless you need four doors. Otherwise they are something that you pay extra for, but dont
benefit from. Benefits also offset price in the mind of the consumer. Each benefit creates a value
to the customer. Each feature, that has no benefit to the customers, decreases the value.

Intangible Product

An intangible product is a product that can only be perceived indirectly such as an insurance
policy. Intangible data products can further be classified into virtual digital goods ("VDG"),
which are virtually located on a computer OS and accessible to users as conventional file types,
such as JPG and MP3 files. Virtual digital goods require further application processing or
transformational work by programmers, so their use may be subject to license and or rights of
digital transfer. On the other hand, real digital goods ("RDG") may exist within the
presentational elements of a data program independent of a conventional file type. Real digital
goods are commonly viewed as 3-D objects or presentational items subject to user control or
virtual transfer within the same visual media program platform. Services or ideas are intangible.

Most companies that sell goods sell tangible products. This ranges from construction products to
home-care goods to agricultural products. However, with the rise of the telecommunications and
technology sectors, more companies sell intangible products than ever before. Intangible goods
differ from services. Although services often rely on intellectual know-how or other intangible
goods or assets, a service is not a good in and of itself.



I ntangible Good Defined
An intangible good is good that is not tangible, meaning it is a non-physical item that you
typically cannot perceive by the senses. You cannot feel, smell, taste, hear or see it. The value of
intangible goods derives from intellectual or legal rights and from the value they add to the other
goods or assets. Intangible goods were less common in the industrial era but are relatively
common in the digital era.
I ntangible Goods Overview
Since intangible goods are not physical, they cannot be destroyed by acts of nature, although
they can be expropriated, or taken over by a country's regime. Intangible goods and assets can be
classified into two separate categories, limited life and unlimited life. Intangible goods with a
limited life include copyrights and patents, which expire after a defined period of time.
Intangible goods with an unlimited life include trademarks and knowledge, which never expire.
Uses of I ntangible Goods
Intangible goods are assets but not considered inventory. Since their value can be hard to
quantify, you typically cannot use them as collateral for loans. Your company can unlock the
value of intangible goods through salable physical goods including use of copyrights to publish
books, the use of patents to produce drugs or the use of name recognition to brand commodity
products.
Examples: Copyrights and Reputation
An example of an intangible good is a copyright. A book or music that are licensed are tangible
products, but the rights to them are intangible. As an author, artist or company, you can license
your copyright to others and generate revenue from those licensing fees. Another example of an
intangible good is reputation. If a company has a strong, positive reputation in one industry, it
can help a company that has less visibility in that industry gain customers and revenues. This is
typically done through co-marketing or co-branding, where one company leverages the
reputation of another.
Digital Content
In today's world, much information is delivered over the Internet. As the world goes increasingly
digital, the level of digital content increases. All of the digital content delivered over the Internet
is intangible goods. This includes intellectual content delivered as e-books, downloadable music
files and downloadable software. You can also convert intangible goods to services, including
subscription services for software as a service,, which is accessible online as long as you pay the
subscription fee.
Selling the I ntangible
Based on what you just read about selling the tangible you might think it would be much harder
to sell an intangible product or service. And in some respects you would be right. The challenge
of marketing and selling intangible products is that you have to paint a word picture for your
customer. They cant see or touch your product. If you are selling an insurance policy you have
to be able to take your customer into the future and show them that, if you are no longer around,
the family wont be out in the street. Intangible selling is emotional selling. Here emotion creates
the value. Yes, there are features, benefits and price in intangible sales too. Customers buy
intangible products based on how that product makes them feel. There is some logic involved too
but when logic and emotion come into conflict, emotion always wins.





















Conclusion
Marketing is an art as much as it is a science. Those businesses that do their own
sometimes fall into the trap, that no matter what the product or service might be,
all marketing is done the same way. If you are guilty of following this philosophy
then I have some bad news for you. You may not be in business a year from now.
There are vast differences between the products you produce and the services you
sell.








































END OF ASSIGNMENT - 4