Lesson 3/Week 6: Invent on Behalf of the Customer

Another question we were asked to think about for this week concerns the various levels of products we currently use.  There are generally 3 levels of a product:

• Core – the benefits itself we set out to obtain as consumers
• Actual – the physical product we purchase
• Augmented – additional non-tangible benefits a product can offer and customers find useful

The first two levels are fairly self-explanatory.  However, the idea of augmented products includes areas like sales service, help lines, warranties, or free delivery.  Here are a couple of my favorite products:

Core	Actual	Augmented
Blu-Ray movie player, games console	PS3	PS Network for games, Smart-TV replacement
Mobile communication and information capability	HTC One M8 Cell Phone	Sprint’s 4G LTE network, Google Android Apps
Sustenance	Papa John’s Pizza	Fast service, convenient online ordering, frequent promotions