In marketing, the whole product concept is an adaptation of the total product concept developed by Ted Levitt, a professor at Harvard Business School. In his book entitled “The Marketing Imagination” Levitt drew attention to the fact that consumers purchase more than the core product itself. Rather, they purchase the core product combined with complimentary attributes, the majority of which are intangible.[1]
The total product was Levitt’s vision of how intangible elements could be added to a physical product, transforming it into an offering that was often more valuable than the physical attributes alone.
Following the insights provided by Ted Levitt, Regis McKenna renamed the total product concept, calling it the "whole product" which he defined as a generic or core product, augmented by everything that is needed for the customer to have a compelling reason to buy.[2]
The total product concept was also refined by Tom Peters. In a 1986 publication entitled "The Eye of the Beholder", Peters proposed an extension to Levitt’s total product concept that describes the discrepancy between insider and customer perceptions in three different types of industries.[3]
Another framework was suggested by Warren Schirtzinger called Low Risk Reinvention. Schirtzinger organizes intangible product attributes into three groups that surround the core innovation, and act to lower the end user's perception of risk and encourage the adoption of a new innovation;[4]
End User Harmony - "product attributes that allow customers to continue using existing systems and methods and minimize change while allowing the exploration and testing of a new innovation"
Category Cooperation - "product attributes that reflect the supplier's credibility and commitment to a market category mostly through adherence to industry standards, complimentary products and intellectual property"
Safety in Numbers - "systems that support product adoption by acting as external safeguards through the establishment of end-user communities and an independent, long-term support infrastructure"
Working together with Warren Schirtzinger, Jose Bermejo suggested new intangible attributes that apply specifically to software products. Jose's angle sees the intangible elements of the Schirtzinger's Low Risk Reinvention as a way to build a brand beyond a core product and named his refined approach for software-based products The Brand Development Wheel™.[5] He also separates the tangible dimensions of product and technology to differentiate what is required by innovators versus what is required by early adopters.
^Levitt, Theodore (1983). The Marketing Imagination. Simon and Schuster. p. 78. ISBN 9780029190906.
^McKenna, Regis (1985). The Regis Touch. Addison Wesley. p. 84. ISBN 0201139642.
^"Product Perception and the Eye of the Beholder". High Tech Strategies. Retrieved 2022-06-16.
^"Low Risk Reinvention". High Tech Strategies. Retrieved 2022-01-28.
In marketing, the wholeproduct concept is an adaptation of the total product concept developed by Ted Levitt, a professor at Harvard Business School...
jargon, product lining refers to the offering of several related products for individual sale. Unlike product bundling, where several products are combined...
Whole Foods Market, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon, is an American multinational supermarket chain headquartered in Austin, Texas, which sells products...
oil is the final product of an oil company. The farmer sells his vegetables as his final product, after they have been through the whole process of growth...
are also provided. "A compelling use case that will create pull, a wholeproduct that nails the use case, and a word-of-mouth community that can communicate...
of 24.5%. Today the company is able to manage for its customers the wholeproduct chain: Concept Design Simulation Prototyping Testing Manufacturing The...
The Whole Earth Catalog (WEC) was an American counterculture magazine and product catalog published by Stewart Brand several times a year between 1968...
user guides Release specialists who are responsible for building the wholeproduct and software versioning User experience designers, who are creating...
Powdered milk and dairy products include such items as dry whole milk, nonfat (skimmed) dry milk, dry buttermilk, dry whey products and dry dairy blends...
(flour) and Old Norse mjǫl (flour). The exact composition of products legally marketable as "whole wheat bread" varies from country to country and even within...
Associates, an early distributor of CP/M and later of MS-DOS software, had a wholeproduct line named Software Bus. D-Bus is used in many modern desktop environments...
Milk varies in fat content. Skim milk is milk with zero fat, while whole milk products contain fat. Milk is an ingredient in many confectioneries. Milk...
whole. The agile product backlog in scrum is a prioritized features list, containing short descriptions of all functionality desired in the product....
wholeproduct and take pride in it. Batch production is the method used to produce or process any product of the groups or batches where the products...
In industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its inception through the engineering...
stored, and within a short duration is used. Blood can be given as a wholeproduct or the red blood cells separated as packed red blood cells. Blood is...
blood product is any therapeutic substance prepared from human blood. This includes whole blood; blood components; and plasma derivatives. Whole blood...
widen its product range. For example, a psychological counseling could offer online consultation via video calls. Building the wholeproduct: Apart from...
each work on an individual step, rather than having a worker work on a wholeproduct from start to finish. The emergence of mass production allowed supply...
Keefe's products outside of national name brands, The Whole Shabang was only sold in commissary stores. However, ex-inmates began looking for the product once...
Panda antivirus received a Gold award from AV-Comparatives for the WholeProduct Dynamic "Real-World" Protection Test. Panda Security was named "Company...
means of feature diagrams. Feature models are widely used during the wholeproduct line development process and are commonly used as input to produce other...
a number of blood products including packed red blood cells, platelet concentrate, cryoprecipitate, and fresh frozen plasma. Whole blood has similar risks...
Sustainable products are products who are either sustainability sourced, manufactured or processed that provide environmental, social and economic benefits...
dough, topping it with poppy seeds or sesame seeds, and then baking the wholeproduct to cook the dough. It has been said that the bagel dog was invented...
Global Information