Product Mix

Question

Please can you explain the term 'product mix'?

Answer

The product mix is defined as the total number of product lines that a company offers to its customers. A product mix can be small or large; for example, one company might only sell 2 different products, whereas another company sells 20 different products. There are 4 components of the product mix: Width – The number of product lines that a company sells. For example, if a company has 4 product lines, then their product mix width is 4. If a company has 10 product lines, then their product mix width is 10. Length – The total number of products in a company’s product mix. For example, a company may have 3 product lines and 5 different brands within the 3 product lines. Product mix length is measured by multiplying the number of product lines by the number of brands. Therefore, in this example, the product mix length is 15 (3 x 5). Depth – The total number of variations that can be found in the product mix. Examples of variations of products are: size, flavour, ingredients. For example, a company selling shower gel has 4 different sizes and 2 different flavours of a product. Just like product mix length, you measure product mix depth by multiplying the two numbers together. Therefore, the product mix depth for this shower gel company is 8 (4 x 2). Consistency – How closely related a company’s product lines are. This is assessed by looking at the production, use and distribution of a product. A company's product mix may be consistent in distribution but very different in use. For example, Men’s Health sell their nutrition bars and magazines in retail stores (distribution). However, the two products are very different; one is edible and one is not (use). Production consistency of these two products is very different as well.

References

Kotler, P. and Keller, K. (2016). Marketing Management. 15th Edition. New York: Pearson