No entrepreneur would just begin to produce a product without carrying out initial research to determine if the product would sell or not, and if there is a hungry market large enough to necessitate production.
The largeness of the market, the willingness of target customers to buy, the financial capability of customers, the ability to produce and meet customers’ needs, and the rewarding potentials of profits are what should encourage an entrepreneur to choose a particular product for marketing.
It should be noted that a product or service is the only link between a business and its customers. The customer buys a product because of the social, material, and psychological appeal the product has to him. So a product must represent the social and personal fulfillment of values to the customer before it can be purchased.
So in simple language, a product can be said to be anything that is offered to a market for acquisition, use or consumption in exchange for money. Before choosing on what particular product to release into the market, the following factors must be considered –
- Size of the market: The larger the numbers of people demanding for a product and the assurance that it will be a continuous and repetitive demand, the more the chances of the product to sell. You must only consider a product for a market if there is large enough existing market for it.
- Source of funding: Releasing a product into the market is what people see, they rarely see the amount of money expended into researching the product, develop its value proposition, producing it in the factory, promoting it via adverts, selling and distributing it to reach customers in time.
- Availability of raw materials: What is the need of producing a product when its raw materials are not available or accessible at all? How do you want to sustain production or meet the growing needs of customers? So however good a product is, you cannot begin producing or marketing if there are no raw materials to sustain production.
- Technical requirements: An entrepreneur must be aware of what it technically takes to get a product into the hands of consumers. The production facility, the raw materials used, the utility incurred, the number of personnel, and the amount of time and resources used before the finished product is obtained.
- Profitability and marketability: You choose a product to develop and market because it sells for a very high amount or because it is low-priced but with thousands of people requesting for it on nearly daily basis. A new product may be developed to meet customers’ needs and a new product may be produced to complement an existing product.
- Availability of qualified personnel: Unless you are a sole businessman, you can’t run a company with objectives to meet the needs of the general public without the assistance of qualified and experienced personnel. A qualified personnel or employees will help to make things easier for you while also helping you to attain your set business goals in time.
- Government policies: There are certain products such as certain pesticides that the government may ban due to their toxicity on the environment, and their certain brands of products which the government will prohibit due to its effect on consumers and the general environment.