Product: Definition and additional resources from BNET
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BNET Business Dictionary

Business Definition for: Product

  • anything that is offered to a market that customers can acquire, use, interact with, experience, or consume, to satisfy a want or need. Early marketing tended to focus on tangible physical goods and these were distinguished from services. More recently, however, the distinction between products and services has blurred, and the concept of the product has been expanded so that in its widest sense it can now be said to cover any tangible or intangible thing that satisfies the consumer. Products that are marketed can include services, people, places, and ideas.

Wiktionary Definition for: Product

  • a commodity offered for sale.
  • Ex: ''That store offers a variety of '''products'''.''
  • The amount of an artifact that has been created by someone or some process.
  • Ex: ''They improve their '''product''' every year; they export most of their agricultural production.''
  • A consequence of someone's efforts or of a particular set of circumstances.
  • Ex: ''Skill is the '''product''' of hours of practice; His reaction was the '''product''' of hunger and fatigue.''
  • A chemical substance formed as a result of a chemical reaction.
  • Ex: ''This is a '''product''' of lime and nitric acid.''
  • math A quantity obtained by multiplication.
  • Ex: ''The '''product''' of 2 and 3 is 6.''
  • The set of elements common to two or more sets.
  • Ex: ''The set of red hats is the '''product''' of the set of hats and the set of red things.''
  • Any tangible output or service that is a result of a process and that is intended for delivery to a customer or end user.
  • Ex: ''A '''product''' is a work product that is delivered to the customer.'' CMMI®
  • The outcome or 'thingness' of an activity, especially in contrast to a process by which the product was created or altered.
  • Ex: ''This '''product''' of last month's quality standards committee is quite good, even though the process was flawed.''

Additional Resources

Product Roadmap To The Promised Land
Before the testing and bug fixing, before the technical design and product plan, before the business and technical requirements, comes the Product Roadmap. And as we speak, Product Managers are asking themselves the question: "Just what is a Product Roadmap?" Do you have a Product Roadmap? One can be critical...
Tags: Pragmatic Marketing Inc., vision
White papers 2003-01-01
Guerrilla Training: Learning The Product
It's an unfortunate characteristic of our economy today that inadequate time is spent on training employees on a product. Usually, companies look to Product Managers to be the gurus on the product, understanding the ins and outs of all the features. So how do you get to the point where...
Tags: Workforce management, Pragmatic Marketing Inc., training
White papers 2004-01-01
New Product Adoption
The New Product Development NPD process involves envisioning, designing, and delivering new products in an organization. After the product has been successfully developed, comes the exercise of adopting the new product in accordance with the trends prevailing in the market. Product management involves the management of product features, brand, warranty,...
Tags: Product marketing, Ohio State University, New Product Development, brand
Presentations 2003-01-01
New-Product Development And Product Life-Cycle Strategies
The marketing mix of an organization involves examining the product, price, promotion, and place aspects. Of these, the product aspect entails the consideration of product features, brand, warranty, and services of the particular product. All products go through a product life cycle and, with time, gradually die down. It is...
Tags: Product marketing, Marketing research, Pearson Education Inc., product life cycle, product development process, product lifecycle, New Product Development, product development, brand, marketing
Presentations 2003-01-01
Product Market
The author of this article says that alteration of a material product is sometimes required to match the product to local taste and conditions. Many times adaptation is also used to maintain a products righteousness in a unique environment. . A product may be well acceptable in markets, but may...
Tags: environment
White papers 2003-01-01
Strategy-Focused Product Innovation With Product Scorecard And Product Innovation Scorecard
This paper shows how strategy-focused product innovation can be done with a product scorecard and a product innovation scorecard. A product scorecard is a performance measurement system that allows the product managers to view the product performances from several perspectives simultaneously. A product innovation scorecard is a performance measurement system...
Tags: University of Texas, product innovation, lifecycle management, strategy, Balanced Scorecard, positioning, performance
White papers 2004-08-11
Product Decisions
Marketers think of a product as a bundle of physical, service, and symbolic characteristics expected to yield benefits to the consumer. Products may range from goods tangible things to services intangible things, although most products will have some degree of both characteristics. A product item is a specific version of...
Tags: University of Georgia, benefit
White papers 2003-07-07
New Product Development
Product management involves the management of product features, brand, warranty, and services of the particular product. All products go through a product life cycle and, with time, gradually die down. It is essential for the organization to analyze the product life cycle on a regular basis and come up with...
Tags: Product marketing, Marketing research, University of Texas, product life cycle, New Product Development, product development process, product development, brand
Presentations 2003-01-01
New Product Marketing
Publicity is the most cost effective way to launch your company's latest new product regardless of whether you plan to market your new product on a local, national or international scale. You can introduce a new product to thousands, even millions of people literally overnight and gain valuable new product...
Tags: Marketing research, Advanced Marketing Consultants Inc., product marketing, advertisement
White papers 2003-08-31
The 4 Ps Of Marketing In Your Internet Marketing Plan (Product Strategy)
Except for manufacturers, perhaps, for many businesses the product strategy part of marketing is really about marketing the company, often not the individual goods or services that the company offers. So to discuss product-marketing strategy, begin to think of the business, as the product, one is marketing will gain some...
Tags: Web site development, Marketing research, Web technology, marketing, Internet marketing, knowledge base, product marketing, Web site, customer service, knowledge, strategy, Internet
White papers 2000-05-01
Product development and Product life cycle research
This articles defines about the product life cycle including issues like :Need to test your new product idea, its name, packaging, a package burst, or even a logo before investing further in it? Need to test the product itself before launch or before reformulation? Or, need to benchmark and monitor...
Tags: Product marketing, Marketing research, product life cycle, product development, monitor, performance
White papers 2003-01-01
Reducing New Product Introduction (NPI) Time Using a Packaged Software Solution
In several industries, the total time taken to introduce a new product into the market can be the key difference between a blockbuster and a mediocre performing new product. New Product Introduction involves several collaborative processes including product design, product quality planning, identifying and qualifying vendors and plants for sourcing...
Tags: Strategy, MetricStream Inc., product design, Software Solution, sourcing, industry, software
White papers
Disruptive Customer Demands
Product Managers experience product-related requests from customers. These requests help align the product with customer's needs, shed light on how they use the product and generally improve the attractiveness of the product to its target market. However, sometimes, these requests become disruptive. This can happen when providing a solution is...
Tags: Request, Customer, Product
White papers 2003-01-01
Product Life Cycle Methodologies
This article defines about the product life cycle methodology to manage product launch processes since 1983. It is the roadmap we use to ensure the quality and comprehensiveness of a product launch. It directs the process from ideas to implementation. It covers the timeline from product ideas to product...
Tags: Product marketing, Marketing research, product life cycle
White papers 2003-01-01
Product Strategy Doesn't Just Happen
Discover the need for developing a process to drive the development of your product strategy in order to achieve sustained growth. Explore both the key aspects and myths of successful product strategy processes. What is a successful product strategy? A successful product strategy is the use of a firm's product-related...
Tags: Pragmatic Marketing Inc., product strategy
White papers 2007-12-01
Product Management And Product Marketing Activity
Where do product managers spend their time? Over 80% of product managers are monitoring development projects and writing market requirements. In addition, most product managers are involved with researching market needs and creating sales presentations and demos. The good news from these charts is that over 50% of product managers...
Tags: Pragmatic Marketing Inc., product manager, business case, sales presentation, analysis, product marketing, monitoring, sales
White papers 2007-12-01
The Discipline of Product Management
Product development is the process of designing, building, operating, and maintaining a good or service. Software and Internet companies use a product development process to ensure that they are not just manufacturing a technology, but creating a product that people will want to buy and continue to use. To be...
Tags: Product marketing, Strategy, product development, product development process, manufacturing, pricing strategy, marketing, information technology, Internet, software
White papers 2002-06-29
End Of Life: Retiring A Product
Outdated software can turn into a monster. How do you discontinue a product that is no longer profitable? And how do you know that it's time? One aspect of product management that people talk about in theory but rarely practice is the product life cycle. That is, we can birth...
Tags: Product marketing, Marketing research, Pragmatic Marketing Inc., product life cycle, theory, software
White papers 2007-12-01
Publicity Can Be A Profitable New Product Marketing Strategy
Publicity is the most cost effective way to launch your company's latest new product regardless of whether you plan to market your new product on a local, national or international scale. With publicity, you can introduce a new product to thousands, even millions of people literally overnight and gain valuable...
Tags: Marketing research, Advanced Marketing Consultants Inc., product marketing
White papers 2007-12-01
Life Cycle Management for Improving Product Service Quality
For achieving better environmental performance of products or product systems, it is essential to manage total product life cycle. This paper describes a method for supporting product life cycle management by comprehensive product life cycle simulation, which is a basis for designing and evaluating total product life cycle. For life...
Tags: Product marketing, Marketing research, product life cycle, lifecycle management, customer satisfaction, performance
White papers 2002-04-16