Before you start
You will be able to
- Distinguish the core benefit, the actual product and the augmented product of an offer.
- Classify consumer products as convenience, shopping, specialty or unsought products, and explain what each class implies for price, place and promotion.
- Describe a company’s product mix by its width, line length, depth and consistency, and explain line stretching, line filling and line extension.
- Calculate the cost consequences of quality and range decisions, including the cost-of-goods difference between tiers and the extra listing fees of a wider range.
- Evaluate a product decision against the positioning, the other three Ps and the costs it creates.
Review first
- The marketing mix and customer value — You need the four Ps, customer value, positioning and how to work out what Lantern keeps per can.
Fictional case A fictional coffee business founded by Ana Lim. It starts as a catering and barista-training service, opens its own cafés and an online shop for beans, and plans a canned cold brew.
The idea
Fictional case
Before Lantern Cold Brew can have a price or a place on a shelf, Ana has to decide what it is. The market file gives her three liquids (Classic blend, Single-origin and Organic single-origin, each with a taste-panel score and a cost per can), one flavour or three, and the category’s standard 250 ml can. Each choice changes what shoppers get, what retailers have to stock and what every can costs Lantern to make.
What a product is
In everyday speech a product is a physical thing. In marketing the word is used more broadly: a product is anything offered to a market to satisfy a want or need. That includes physical goods (a can of cold brew), services (a barista workshop), experiences (an evening tasting at a café), and even places, organisations and ideas. Some textbooks, including OpenStax’s, keep “product” for tangible goods and say “service” for intangible ones; this course uses the broad meaning, because the P in the 4Ps covers both.
Most offers are a mixture. OpenStax describes a product–service continuum running from almost pure goods to almost pure services, with most offers in between: a restaurant meal is food (a good) prepared and served by people (a service). Every product also has tangible attributes you can see and measure (the liquid, the 250 ml can, the label) and intangible ones you can’t (the brand’s reputation, the story of the coffee’s origin, the reassurance of a guarantee). Customers buy both.
Three levels of a product
A useful way to analyse any offer is to look at it in three layers, a model found in most introductory marketing textbooks (Philip Kotler’s books call the centre “core customer value”; OpenStax calls it the “core product”).
- Core benefit
- The underlying need the customer is really satisfying, the answer to “what is the customer actually buying?”. For a commuter buying a can of cold brew it might be “an alert, enjoyable cold coffee on the way to work, without the wait”.
- Actual product
- What delivers the core benefit: the features, quality level, design, brand name and packaging. For Lantern: the Single-origin Ethiopian liquid steeped 20 hours, its taste, the 250 ml can, the Lantern name and label.
- Augmented product
- The additional services and benefits around the actual product: guarantees, delivery, installation, customer support, loyalty schemes. For Lantern: a money-back promise on the first can, or loyalty points that count in its cafés.
The levels matter because they show where an offer can be different. Summit, Arcadia and Daily Grind all deliver the same core benefit, cold coffee in a can, so Lantern must compete on the actual product (a better-tasting single-origin liquid) and on the augmented product (what comes with it). Theodore Levitt argued in 1980 that any product, even one that looks like a commodity, can be differentiated in this way. The levels also show what a product decision really is: choosing the liquid is a decision about the actual product, but only worth making if it serves the core benefit customers want.
Product attributes: quality, features and design
The actual product is built from attributes. Quality has two distinct meanings that are easy to confuse. Performance quality is how well the product does its job: how good the cold brew tastes, measured in Lantern’s case by the taste-panel score (6, 7.5 or 8.5). Conformance quality is consistency: whether every can meets the specification, tasting the same in July as in January. David Garvin (1987) listed both among eight dimensions of quality, alongside features, reliability, durability, serviceability, aesthetics and perceived quality. A premium brand needs both kinds: a superb liquid that varies from batch to batch fails its customers as surely as a dull one.
Features are specific components or functions: a resealable lid, a label that changes colour when the can is cold enough, a code on the can that traces the coffee to its farm. Each feature adds cost, so the test is whether target customers value it more than it costs. Style and design are different again: style is how the product looks, while design also covers how it works and feels in use. A can that is easy to open, comfortable to hold and recognisable in a chiller from two metres away is a design achievement, not just a pretty label.
Branding, packaging and labelling
A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them, that identifies a seller’s product and sets it apart from competitors’. For buyers, a brand saves effort and reduces risk: a shopper who liked Lantern in its café can find the same quality in a can without tasting it first. For sellers, a brand can be legally protected, builds repeat buying and can support a higher price. Lantern Cold Brew uses an existing brand, built in Lantern’s catering and cafés, on a new kind of product; whether that reputation carries over to a can in a supermarket chiller is one of the launch’s biggest unknowns, and the subject of course M10.
Packaging is the container and wrapping of a product, and it has several jobs: protecting and preserving the contents, making the product convenient to carry, store and use, informing the buyer, and promoting the product at the moment of choice. The 250 ml can does all of these. It keeps the coffee fresh and chilled, fits a hand and a bag, carries the information the law and the shopper need, and is Lantern’s only salesperson in a chiller full of rivals.
Labelling is the part of packaging that carries words and symbols, and it is regulated in most markets. In the European Union, for example, prepacked food and drink must show by law the name of the food, the ingredients, allergens, the net quantity, a date mark, storage conditions where needed, the name and address of the business responsible and a nutrition declaration, among other items. Rules differ between countries, so a producer checks them for every market it sells in; Harbour City is fictional, so this course doesn’t specify its rules.
In depth
Consumer product classes
Products bought by households for their own use can be grouped by how people shop for them. The three classic groups, convenience, shopping and specialty goods, go back to Melvin Copeland at Harvard in 1923; later textbooks added unsought products. The class matters because it tells you what the other three Ps have to do.
| Class | How people buy | Price | Place | Promotion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Convenience product (milk, soap, a chilled can) | Often, quickly, with little comparison | Low; close to rivals | Intensive: as many outlets as possible | Mass awareness; visibility at the point of sale |
| Shopping product (clothing, furniture, flights) | Less often; compare quality, price and style | Higher; varies with features | Selective: fewer outlets, often with advice | Advertising plus information that helps comparison |
| Specialty product (a luxury watch, a celebrated chef’s restaurant) | Strong preference; extra effort; little comparison | High | Exclusive: one or few outlets | Targeted; protects the brand’s distinctiveness |
| Unsought product (funeral plans, emergency repairs) | Not thought about until needed, or not known about | Varies | Varies; often sold directly | Personal selling and advertising that creates awareness of the need |
The classes describe buying behaviour, not the product itself, so the same product can fall into different classes for different buyers. For a commuter grabbing a can on the way to the platform, Lantern Cold Brew is a convenience product: if it isn’t in that chiller, she buys Daily Grind. For a coffee enthusiast who seeks out single-origin coffee, it may be closer to a specialty product, worth a detour to a natural grocer. Lantern’s positioning asks for both behaviours at once, which is a tension: a convenience product needs wide availability and a price near rivals’, while a premium story needs the selective channels and sampling where it can be told. You will meet this tension again when you choose channels in module 3.
Product lines and the product mix
Few businesses sell one product. A product line is a group of closely related products: they meet similar needs, are sold to similar customers or go through similar channels. The product mix (or product portfolio) is everything a company sells, all its lines together. Four measures describe it.
- Product mix width
- The number of different product lines the company carries.
- Product line length
- The number of items in a line. Adding up all the lines gives the total length of the mix.
- Product line depth
- The number of versions offered of each item in a line: sizes, flavours, colours.
- Product mix consistency
- How closely related the lines are in end use, production requirements, distribution channels or customers.
Here is a hypothetical picture of Lantern’s mix after the launch, invented for this example (it leaves out the drinks sold in its cafés). Beans sold online: House Blend, Ethiopian Single-origin and Decaf, each in a 250 g and a 1 kg bag. Catering and training: office catering, event catering and barista workshops. Cold brew: Original, in a 250 ml can. The mix has a width of 3 lines and a total length of 3 + 3 + 1 = 7 items. The beans line has a depth of 2, since every coffee comes in two sizes. The cold brew line has a depth of 1 with Original alone, or 3 if Lantern launches three flavours, because flavours are versions of the one item, as sizes are.
Consistency is where the example gets interesting. In end use the lines are highly consistent: all coffee, all one brand. In distribution they are not. Beans go by post to online customers, catering is sold directly to businesses, and cold brew would go through distributors and supermarkets, a channel Lantern has never used, with buyers it has never met. Low consistency isn’t wrong, but it means the new line needs skills the business doesn’t yet have.
Line decisions: length, stretching, filling and extensions
The central line decision is length. A line is too short if adding items would raise profit, and too long if removing items would. Longer lines reach more customers and occasions and take up more shelf space, which makes a brand easier to see. They also add costs that are easy to underestimate: more production runs and labels, more forecasting, more stock, and, in retail, a listing fee for every item stocked. Extra items can also cannibalise: take sales from the line’s existing items rather than from competitors.
- Line stretching lengthens a line beyond its current price and quality range. A downward stretch adds a cheaper item (Lantern adding the Classic blend below its Single-origin); an upward stretch adds a dearer one (adding the Organic tier); a two-way stretch does both.
- Line filling adds items within the present range, to cover gaps that customers or competitors could exploit.
- A line extension adds a new variant, such as a flavour, size or format, under an existing brand in a category where the brand already sells. Adding Vanilla to Lantern Cold Brew after launch would be a line extension. A brand extension is different: it takes an existing brand into a new category, which is what Lantern Cold Brew itself is, since the Lantern name moves from cafés and catering into canned drinks.
Lantern’s product decisions
The market file reduces Lantern’s product decisions to three. Two are open in the simulator, the liquid and the range; the can is fixed.
| Tier | Liquid | Taste score (0–10) | Cost of goods per can |
|---|---|---|---|
| Classic blend | Brazil–Colombia blend, steeped 16 hours | 6 | $0.58 |
| Single-origin | Ethiopian single origin, steeped 20 hours | 7.5 | $0.74 |
| Organic single-origin | Certified organic, steeped 20 hours | 8.5 | $0.88 |
Cost of goods per can covers the liquid, the can, the co-packer’s fee and freight to the distributor.
The liquid. Every step up in quality costs money on every can. Moving from the Classic blend to the Single-origin adds $0.16 a can, or $1,600 per 10,000 cans; moving from the Single-origin to the Organic adds $0.14 a can, or $1,400 per 10,000 cans; and the Organic costs $3,000 more per 10,000 cans than the Classic. Divide each step by the taste points it buys and a pattern appears. The first step costs $0.16 ÷ 1.5 ≈ $0.107 a can per taste point; the second costs $0.14 ÷ 1.0 = $0.14 a can per point. Each extra point of taste costs more than the last, which is common: improving a good product is usually dearer than improving a poor one. The Organic tier also brings something the taste score doesn’t measure, a certification that natural-grocer shoppers, who pay for quality and provenance, may value in itself.
The range. One flavour is simpler; three flavours (Original, Oat Milk Latte and Vanilla) appeal to more tastes and fill more shelf space. The market file prices the complexity: the three-flavour range costs $12,000 a year more in extra production runs, labels and printing plates, and every retail channel charges its listing fee per flavour (per SKU, or stock-keeping unit, the code a retailer uses for each distinct item). In supermarkets, one flavour costs $9,000 a year to list and three cost $27,000. The challenging worked example adds this up for the default plan’s channels.
The can. The 250 ml can is the category’s standard and suits the core benefit: one cold serving, carried and drunk on the move. A litre carton for the home fridge would be a different product for a different occasion, sold from a different shelf, and would change the positioning. The simulator holds the can fixed, but the reasoning is the same as for the liquid: the pack has to serve the core benefit for the target customer.
Formulas
Extra cost of goods from a better tier
- Extra cost of goods for the volume sold$
- Cost of goods per unit of the two tiers$ per unit
- Units soldunits
Assumes. The cost per unit of each tier doesn’t change with volume.
Divide the difference in cost per unit by the difference in quality score to compare the cost of each step up in quality.
Extra fixed cost of a wider range
- Extra fixed cost per year of the wider range$ per year
- Number of SKUs (flavours) in each rangeSKUs
- Listing fee per SKU per year in retail channel k$ per SKU per year
- Other fixed costs of the wider range: production runs, labels, printing plates$ per year
Assumes. Every flavour is listed in every retail channel chosen; channels without listing fees add nothing.
For Lantern’s three flavours in supermarkets and natural grocers: (3 − 1) × (9,000 + 2,000) + 12,000 = $34,000 a year.
Extra units needed to pay for a fixed cost
- Extra units the decision must sell to cover its own fixed costunits
- The extra fixed cost of the decision$
- Gross margin per unit: what the producer keeps after the trade’s share and the cost of goods$ per unit
Assumes. The extra units are genuinely extra: sales taken from the company’s own existing items (cannibalisation) don’t count.
Lesson 4 develops this idea into break-even analysis for the whole launch.
Worked examples
Fictional figures
Sort these parts of Lantern’s planned offer into core benefit, actual product and augmented product: (a) a cold, smooth coffee that keeps a commuter alert on the way to work; (b) the Single-origin liquid; (c) the 250 ml can and its label; (d) a refund if the first can disappoints; (e) the Lantern brand name; (f) loyalty points, earned on cans, that count in Lantern’s cafés.
- Find the core benefit by asking what the customer is really buying: not coffee in a can but the result, an alert, enjoyable cold coffee on the move (a).
- The actual product is everything that delivers that benefit and that the customer can see, taste or name: the liquid (b), the can and label (c) and the brand name (e). The brand belongs here because it is part of the product the shopper picks up.
- The augmented product is what comes with the actual product: the refund (d), which removes the risk of a disappointing first can, and the loyalty points (f), which add value beyond the can itself.
- Check the sort by asking whether each item could be removed while the product still delivered the core benefit. Removing the refund or the points leaves a drinkable cold brew, so they are augmentations; removing the liquid leaves nothing.
Answer. Core benefit: a. Actual product: b, c and e. Augmented product: d and f.
What it means. The competitors deliver the same core benefit, so Lantern’s difference has to come from the actual product (a better-tasting, single-origin liquid) and the augmented product (the refund and the link to its cafés). The refund matters most for a new brand: it lowers the risk of trying a can that only 12% of buyers have heard of.
Fictional figures
The default plan sells one flavour, at $3.49, in supermarkets, natural grocers and Lantern’s own cafés and online shop. Listing fees per SKU per year are $9,000 in supermarkets and $2,000 in natural grocers; the direct channel charges none. A three-flavour range adds $12,000 a year of production runs, labels and printing plates. How much extra fixed cost does the three-flavour range add, and how many extra cans would it have to sell to pay for it if they were all sold in supermarkets, where Lantern keeps $3.49 × 0.68 − $0.74 = $1.6332 a can?
- Extra SKUs: three flavours instead of one is 2 extra SKUs in each retail channel.
- Extra listing fees: 2 × ($9,000 + $2,000) = $22,000 a year. In supermarkets alone, listing goes from $9,000 to 3 × $9,000 = $27,000, an extra $18,000; natural grocers add 2 × $2,000 = $4,000.
- Extra fixed cost: $22,000 + $12,000 = $34,000 a year.
- Extra cans to pay for it: $34,000 ÷ $1.6332 ≈ 20,818 cans. (Round at the end: rounding the margin to $1.63 first gives 20,859 cans, 41 more.)
- Put it in proportion: supermarkets sell 45% of 4.8 million = 2,160,000 cans a year, so the extra flavours must win about 20,818 ÷ 2,160,000 ≈ 0.96% of the channel’s cans from competitors, not from Original.
Answer. The three-flavour range adds $34,000 a year of fixed cost and has to sell about 20,800 extra cans a year at the supermarket margin just to pay for itself.
What it means. Variety brings real benefits: more tastes served and more shelf space. But each flavour must earn its listing, and any sale Vanilla takes from Original is not extra. If the oat-milk and vanilla flavours mainly attract buyers who would otherwise have bought Original, the range adds cost and very few cans. That is why many brands launch narrow and add flavours once they have evidence of demand. Note that the simulator ignores cannibalisation, so it will flatter the wider range.
Fictional figures
Lantern’s positioning is café-quality cold brew priced close to Summit (taste score 8, $3.79). Arcadia scores 6 at $2.89. At $3.49 in natural grocers, where the trade keeps 38%, Lantern receives $3.49 × 0.62 = $2.1638 a can. Ana must choose the liquid. Compare the three tiers on fit and on margin, and say what the Organic tier would have to achieve.
- Fit. The Classic blend scores 6, the same as Arcadia, which costs $0.60 less on the shelf. At $3.49 it asks shoppers to pay more for the same taste: it doesn’t fit a café-quality positioning. Single-origin (7.5) and Organic (8.5) both sit clearly above Arcadia, and the Organic even scores above Summit.
- Margin per can in natural grocers: Classic $2.1638 − $0.58 = $1.5838; Single-origin $2.1638 − $0.74 = $1.4238; Organic $2.1638 − $0.88 = $1.2838.
- The Organic tier gives up $1.4238 − $1.2838 = $0.14 a can compared with the Single-origin: $14,000 on every 100,000 cans.
- To break even against the Single-origin, the Organic must sell enough extra cans that its lower margin earns as much in total. At 100,000 Single-origin cans the gross profit is 100,000 × $1.4238 = $142,380; the Organic needs $142,380 ÷ $1.2838 ≈ 110,905 cans, about 10.9% more.
Answer. Rule out the Classic blend: it doesn’t support the positioning. Choose between Single-origin and Organic on evidence: the Organic costs $0.14 more a can and must sell about 11% more cans than the Single-origin would to earn the same gross profit.
What it means. A product decision is a positioning decision and a cost decision at once. Whether natural-grocer shoppers buy 11% more of an organic can is an empirical question: a taste test, a small trial listing or the simulator’s scenario can inform it. Choosing the best liquid because it is the best ignores the cost; choosing the cheapest because it is cheapest ignores the positioning.
Explore
Common mistakes
“The product is the physical thing.”
Customers buy the core benefit, and they judge the whole offer, including the brand, the packaging and the services around it. Two cans with identical liquid are different products if one comes with a guarantee and a brand people trust.
“Higher quality is always better.”
Quality costs money on every unit, and each step up usually costs more than the last ($0.107 a can per taste point from Classic to Single-origin, $0.14 from Single-origin to Organic). The right quality is the one target customers value more than it costs, at the price the positioning sets. And quality means consistency too: conformance quality matters as much as a high taste score.
“More flavours means more sales.”
A wider range adds listing fees, production runs, forecasting and stock, and extra items can take sales from the existing ones. Three flavours in Lantern’s default channels must sell about 20,800 genuinely extra cans just to pay for themselves.
“A product belongs to one class.”
The classes describe how people buy, so the same can is a convenience product for one shopper and close to a specialty product for another. Ask which buying behaviour your target customers show, then build price, place and promotion around it.
“Line length and depth mean the same in every textbook.”
They don’t. In Kotler’s convention length counts the items in a line and depth counts the versions of each item; OpenStax uses depth for the number of items. State your definitions before you compare.
“Packaging is just a container, and the label is a design choice.”
Packaging protects, informs, sells and makes the product convenient, and labels carry information that the law requires in most markets: in the European Union, for example, ingredients, allergens, net quantity and a date mark among others.
Guided practice
Work through these with hints when you need them. Every hint and every worked solution is there to be used.
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On your own
No hints this time. Answer, check, and read the feedback; the solution appears once you have answered or if you ask for it. Your first answers count toward mastery.
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In practice
Product decisions meet their first real test in a retailer’s category review, the regular meeting in which a supermarket buyer decides which items stay on the shelf, which go and which new ones come in. When Lantern presents its cold brew, the buyer’s questions are about the product mix as the shop sees it: what does this can add that the shelf doesn’t already have, why three flavours rather than one, and how fast will each one sell? Shelf space is limited, so every SKU Lantern adds pushes out something else, and the buyer will judge each flavour separately. A slow-selling flavour risks being delisted, and the listing fee paid for it is lost.
A product manager prepares for that meeting with the reasoning of this lesson. She defines the core benefit and the target shopper, shows the actual product’s difference in measurable terms (a taste score above the mid-market brand) and offers augmentations that help the retailer as well as the shopper, such as in-store tastings. For the range she shows the arithmetic: three flavours cost $34,000 a year more across the default retail channels and need about 20,800 extra cans to pay back, so she may propose launching Original alone and adding a second flavour once rate-of-sale data exist. That is a line-length decision taken on evidence, not enthusiasm.
The same reasoning works in other industries. A hotel’s core benefit for a business traveller is a good night’s sleep and an easy working day; its actual product is the room, the bed, the desk and the brand standard; its augmented product is free cancellation, an airport shuttle and loyalty points. Most hotels in a city deliver the core benefit, so they compete in the outer rings. A clothing brand considering a cheaper line faces a stretching decision: a downward stretch reaches new customers, but if the cheaper line carries the same name it can make the original line look less special, and it can take sales from it. Some brands stretch downward under a different name for exactly that reason.
Business markets put even more weight on the augmented product. A battery-storage installer selling to a warehouse sells a system whose core benefit is lower, more predictable energy costs; the actual product is the batteries and their control system; but what often wins the contract is the augmentation: site design, installation, remote monitoring and a performance warranty. The installer’s product manager decides which of those services to include in the standard offer and which to sell separately, a decision about where value is created and where it is captured.
Knowledge check
Six questions, one attempt each, no hints. Score 80% or more to complete the lesson; you can take it again at any time.
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Summary
- A product is anything offered to satisfy a want or need: goods, services and experiences, with tangible and intangible attributes.
- Analyse any offer in three levels: the core benefit the customer is really buying, the actual product that delivers it, and the augmented product of services and benefits around it. Competition usually happens in the outer two.
- Quality has two meanings: performance (how well it works) and conformance (how consistently). Features, design, brand, packaging and legally required labelling complete the actual product.
- Convenience, shopping, specialty and unsought products are bought in different ways, and each class implies a different price, place and promotion. The class depends on the buyer.
- Describe a product mix by width (lines), length (items per line), depth (versions per item) and consistency, and check which convention a source uses.
- Product decisions have costs you can calculate: Lantern’s Organic liquid costs $1,400 more than the Single-origin per 10,000 cans, and three flavours add $34,000 a year of fixed cost in the default channels.
Key formulas
- Extra cost of goods from a better tier
- Extra fixed cost of a wider range
- Extra units needed to pay for a fixed cost
Terms introduced
- Product
- Anything offered to a market to satisfy a want or need: physical goods, services, experiences, places, organisations or ideas.
- Core benefit
- The underlying need a customer satisfies by buying a product; what the customer is really buying.
- Actual product
- The features, quality level, design, brand name and packaging that deliver the core benefit.
- Augmented product
- The additional services and benefits offered with the actual product, such as guarantees, installation, support and loyalty schemes.
- Brand
- A name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of them, that identifies a seller’s product and distinguishes it from competitors’.
- Packaging
- The container and wrapping of a product, which protects it, makes it convenient, informs the buyer and promotes it at the point of choice.
- Convenience product
- A consumer product bought often and quickly, with little comparison, usually at a low price and from many outlets.
- Shopping product
- A consumer product bought less often, after comparing quality, price and style across a few outlets.
- Specialty product
- A consumer product with unique features or a brand identity for which buyers make a special effort and compare little.
- Unsought product
- A consumer product that people don’t know about or don’t think about buying until a need arises, such as funeral plans or emergency repairs.
- Product line
- A group of closely related products that meet similar needs, are sold to similar customers or go through similar channels.
- Product mix
- All the product lines and items a company sells; also called the product portfolio.
- Product mix width
- The number of different product lines a company carries.
- Product line length
- The number of items in a product line (in Kotler’s convention; OpenStax calls this depth).
- Product line depth
- The number of versions offered of each item in a line, such as sizes, flavours or colours (in Kotler’s convention).
- Product mix consistency
- How closely a company’s product lines are related in end use, production, distribution channels or customers.
- Line extension
- A new variant (flavour, size, format) added under an existing brand in a category where the brand already sells. Taking a brand into a new category is a brand extension.
Sources
- Gomez Albrecht, M., Green, M. & Hoffman, L. (2023). Principles of Marketing, section 9.1 “Products, Services, and Experiences”. OpenStax. openstax.org/books/principles-marketing/pages/9-1-products-s…
- Gomez Albrecht, M., Green, M. & Hoffman, L. (2023). Principles of Marketing, section 9.2 “Product Items, Product Lines, and Product Mixes”. OpenStax. openstax.org/books/principles-marketing/pages/9-2-product-it…
- Levitt, T. (1980). Marketing success through differentiation—of anything. Harvard Business Review, January 1980. hbr.org/1980/01/marketing-success-through-differentiation-of…
- Garvin, D. A. (1987). Competing on the eight dimensions of quality. Harvard Business Review, November–December 1987. hbr.org/1987/11/competing-on-the-eight-dimensions-of-quality
- Copeland, M. T. (1923). Relation of consumers’ buying habits to marketing methods. Harvard Business Review, 1(3), 282–289. The original was not consulted; the citation and its role as the source of the convenience, shopping and specialty classes were confirmed from later reviews of the product-classification literature.
- Food Safety Authority of Ireland. “Food Information to Consumers”: the mandatory food information required under Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011. fsai.ie/Business-Advice/Labelling/Food-Information-to-Consum…