PRODUCT MIX VS PRODUCT LINE

Difference between Product Mix and Product Line

Product is defined as anything that is offered to public for purchase by the company. There are various decisions which the management of a company should take about products we should sell, different categories of products, different versions of products, etc. This is where the concept of product mix and product line decisions occur, this article clearly explains the differences between product mix and product line in a detailed manner along with examples.

PRODUCT MIX

Product Mix is defined as the set of all products and items that a particular seller offers for sale. Product mix is also called as product assortment. A product Mix consists of various product lines.

For example, Samsung offers mobiles, T.V’s, A.C’s, washing machines, etc. Here mobiles is one product line, T.V is one product line, etc. Samsung offers many different products which are treated as different product lines, together called as product mix of samsung.

A Company’s product mix has a certain width, length, depth and consistency

WIDTH:

The width of a product mix refers to how many different product lines the company have.

LENGTH:

The length of a product mix shows the total number of products in the product mix of a company.

DEPTH:

The depth of a product shows how many variants are offered for each product in the line.

CONSISTENCY:

The consistency refers that how closely related various product lines are in the end use, distribution channels, etc.

PRODUCT LINE

Product Line is defined as the group or set of products that are closely related because they perform a similar function, targeted at the same customer groups and distributed through same channels,etc. Product Line is the products that are offered by the company which are similar and can be sold for the same customers to satisfy the same want.

For example, Samsung has many product lines, one product line is mobile phones. Samsung has many models of mobile phones from cheap range mobiles to premium range. This type of offering different models of different mobiles for different customers is called as product line.

Usually companies try to have as many as variants in each product liine because they want to enlarge the customer base by filling the gaps in the offerings to avoid new players into the market. A product line is considered as too short if profits can be increased by adding items and the product line is too long if profits can be increased by dropping some products.

There are some important attributes associated with product lines, they are as follows:

LINE STRETCHING

Line Stretching occurs when a company lengthens its product line beyond its current range. There are three types of Line-Stretching decisions- Down Market Stretch, Up Market Stretch, Two Way Stretch.

LINE FILLING

Line Filling is defined as adding more items within the present range to strengthen the product line. Line Filling is done to increase the profits by selling the missing items in the line.

LINE MODERNIZATION

Line Modernization is that the company like to upgrade their product offerings with new technologies to make the customers upgrade to high valued, higher priced items.

LINE FEATURING

Line Featuring is featuring a one or two products in the line to attract the customers into showrooms and then try to expose all their models to the customers. This is mainly done in the customer durables marketing.

CONCLUSION

from the above discussion, we can easily conclude that the product line is the subset of the product mix. There are various product lines in a company but only one Product Mix.

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