What are Product Characteristics?
Product characteristics refer to the attributes that are added to various products to improve product descriptions. Some examples of product characteristics are weight, shape, size, or color. In some industries, such as the pharmaceutical industry, product characteristics play a very important role.
Significance of Product Characteristics in E-commerce
Product characteristics play a deciding role in a brand’s overall market reputation. Here are some of its key benefits:
- Maintain transparency: With a product that has the right accompanying product characteristics label, box, or leaflet, there will be a sense of transparency, which buyers appreciate.
- Easier maintenance in warehouses: When product characteristics like manufacturing and expiry dates are kept a record of, companies can use that data to combine stocks with the same manufacturing and expiry dates and, subsequently, ship them out accordingly.
- Build awareness: If a company has launched a novel product, the product characteristics sheet can help provide awareness to the buyers about the unique features of the product.
Prerequisites for Product Characteristics and How It Works
To prepare product characteristics, it is necessary to have all the information about the product. Therefore, it is imperative to have a copy of essential information like
- Manufacturing date
- Expiry date
- Batch number
- Product dimension
- Physical attributes
- Storage instructions (if any)
- Usage instructions (if any), and so on.
Subsequently, this information can be printed on a label, stuck to the product itself, or on its box. Sometimes, all the characteristics are printed on a leaflet with the product.
Use Case with Product Characteristics
Suppose a medicine manufacturing company ships out its products to retailers. In addition to every batch of a particular medicine, the company also sends out a document that contains the product characteristics, like composition, dosage, usage, and storage, of each type of medicine. This document helps retailers evaluate the basic features of every medicine and sell them accordingly.