Product Levels

A product is anything that can be offered to a consumers to satisfy a requirement. If there is no requirement, the product creates a requirement. Cadbury Silk is one such product. The chocolate industry is already saturated with all kinds and varieties of chocolates. There was no need as such for this product. But this product was created because Dairy Milk had reached its maturity stage in its Product Life Cycle. How long can a marketeer offer the same product to the consumer? Today customers want more and expect more from a brand. Hence the launch of Cadbury Silk.

To create a sub-brand of Cadbury Dairy Milk that sells at 11 times the price was an onerous task for the company. Fortunately premiumisation gathering steam over the last few years with more affluent shoppers helped its case. In a lot of ways the legacy of the successful parent brand has been a double-edged sword, according to market experts. However, a major challenge that such a sub-brand of an existing successful brand has to tackle is how not to alienate lovers of the base product, who have a palate memory that is as old as their childhood. Or how not to vacate a very large and precious space occupied currently by Cadbury Dairy Milk. 

"Cadbury Dairy Milk extended chocolate consumption to firstly, the adult segment, and secondly, to all the different occasions for which meetha (sweets) used to be consumed in the Indian context, in a sense "re-positioning" chocolate in the mind of the consumer." With such a successful core brand, it is indeed a challenge to sufficiently differentiate an extension in the same category, price it at a premium point, and make it a success.

5 Product Levels of Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk

• Core Benefit: The benefit the customer is really buying. Silk provides the core benefit of satisfying hunger and cravings for a chocolate.

• Basic Product: The core benefit of hunger and craving is transformed into the ingredients the chocolate- Silk  includes: milk solids, cocoa, butter etc.

• Expected Product: The minimum set of expectations and attributes which a consumer expects when he purchases the product. It should be tasty, heavy and creamy chocolate.

• Augmented Product:  The marketeer prepares a product that exceeds expectations. They have differentiated the product from the competitors as well as Dairy Milk itself by making it a rich, smooth and creamy chocolate which gives a melt in the mouth experience to the consumer. They have also added variants such as roasted almonds, fruit n nut and orange peel.

•  Potential Product: This encompasses all the possible augmentations and transformations the product or offering might undergo in the future. Here companies search for new ways to satisfy customers and distinguish their offering.     

Linkage between 3 C's model and 5 Product Levels

Customer: Core benefit and Basic product falls into this category. The core benefit of the chocolate is to satisfy hunger and provide taste to the customer. The basic product chocolate includes milk solids, cocoa, butter etc. which helps in providing energy that satisfies hunger of a consumer. 

Company: Expected Product and Augmented Product falls into this category. The company formulates the product in such a way as  to cater to the customers expectations.
The consumer expects the product to be creamy, tasty, yummy, heavy and well-packaged.
Augmented Product exceeds the customers expectations. It differentiates itself from others by its different brand positioning. Silk was positioned as a Melt in the mouth experience chocolate. The ad in itself created a craving for consuming that chocolate in the customers mind.

Competitor: Augmented and Potential product falls into this category. Augmented product differentiates itself from its competitors by positioning the brand differently. Galaxy is offering a similar silky smooth chocolate at a cheaper price which can pose a stiff competition to Cadbury Silk. Potential products when created by competitors poses a stiff competition to the core brand.