What is a Product?
A product is an item or service that businesses offer to fulfill a customer’s needs. Both real and virtual products are available in the market currently. A product could also be a hybrid, which contains both real-world and digital components.
Significance of Product in E-commerce Logistics
A product is like a connecting bridge between businesses and their customers. Some of the major benefits of products are:
- Brand image: A good and reliable product helps build brand image and better customer relations.
- Encourages progress: A new product launched by a company in the market influences other companies in the same niche to compete by making better products of the same type. Hence, products lead to advancement and progress.
How Product Works
Companies usually follow several steps to develop a product, and they are as follows:
- Generation of an idea: It includes creatively thinking about the product by looking at demand in the market.
- Research: This is an important step in product development. The idea is shared with online forums, crowdfunding campaigns, and so on to check its viability.
- Planning and time management: Planning for product development is usually done before building a prototype within an appropriate time frame.
- Prototype generation: In this stage of product development, a prototype for the product is generated and tested using focus groups or surveys.
- Sourcing and supply chain management: Once the prototype meets all the requirements, vendors are contracted to build the supply chain. This phase mostly involves manufacturing, warehousing, and so on.
- Cost and pricing: Once all steps have been completed, the cost and pricing of the product are determined based on retail and wholesale demands.
- Launch or commercialization: This is the final step to releasing your product into the market. This can be done through various websites, advertisements, pop-up notifications on social media, an email subscription list, and other means. In this way, a product is commercialized in the market.
Use Case With Product
Imagine a company in Australia has launched a trademarked product that allows users to find discount codes for various online stores. Such a product would gain a lot of customer attention and praise and help build the company’s image in the market.
