Miki Blue Eyes Weblog

by Ken Lund

Product Line Management Products ? An Effective Way to Market Products?

If you have a chain of software products, then it can be well managed with the help of Product Line Management. You must employ a strategy to sell these related products or chain of products. A line of products are those which are related to each other in the type, quality and size etc. This way you can create a family branding by having several closely related products under one brand.

At a later stage if you want to add another new product, this would be termed as line extensions. With brand leveraging, you try to improve up on quality on this new product. This requires a creative strategy to market this chain of products. Rejection on one, will affect the other products in the same chain. When a product is doing well or not functioning well, it can influence the profit and losses of other products in the chain too. This is because the products in the same chain have a greater consistency and are closely related to each other. Hence, there is greater vulnerability as rejection of one will influence the others too.

One must make use of creative brand management techniques to these products in chain. This would help enhance equity of a brand. Never commit the mistake of trading down. Incase you add a product which is inferior in quality in comparison to other products in the same chain, then the whole chain of items may face rejections.

Often, seen in case of such closely related items is the pricing which is in line with the other. They are often priced at the same rate offering the feeling to the customer that the whole range of items comes in the price point. You may face difficulties offering them at the same price when there is an inflation or deflation and it does not allow for flexibility.

Usually PDM (Product Line Management) tools are required to manage 3-D files and all of their associated sub-files. PDM applications usually do not have the versatility to manage anything other than that one specific file type.

Related posts:

1. Process and Activities supported by Product life cycle management
2. Vision Shopsters: Product life cycle management in the apparel industry