Consumer product classes are based on how consumers think about and shop for products. However, different groups of potential customers may have different needs and buying behavior for the same product. Thus, the same product could be placed in two or more product classes, depending on the needs and behavior of target customers. Therefore, product planners should focus on specific groups of customers (i.e., market segments) whose needs and buying behavior are relatively homogeneous. As you do the exercise, you will see that the product classes have very little meaning unless they are related to specific target markets. You may find it helpful to reference Exhibit below.

Answer the question for each of the scenarios below.

For each scenario below, indicate the consumer product class (see Exhibit) based on the characteristics of each group of customers, and explain why you placed the product in this class.

Scenarios

1. Ingrid Stevenson, a college student, was looking to buy her father a birthday present. Her dad was a big fan of the Denver Broncos football team and he also loved to wear baseball caps. While her father already owned a couple of Broncos hats, he was always in the market for something different. She also knew her father was quite particular about his hats. She knew he liked the hats to be made of cotton and to have a good feel. He also liked them to have something unique on the front of each hat. Ingrid ended up going to several different shops at a local mall and then a sporting goods store with a good selection before finding just the right hat. Her father loved the gift.
2. As he walked into a Walmart, Jeremy Bower was looking for a hat to wear on a hot sunny day. He saw a display of baseball-style caps at the front of the store. He saw hats with names or logos of sports teams, a local college, and even sporting goods products. Other hats were blank or had weird sayings. Jeremy grabbed the least expensive hat and purchased it.
3. Dawn Brady was at her cousin's house and saw a very unique and different baseball cap. This cap was like a Green Bay Packers football helmet with the G logo on the side. She had never seen one before. She asked her cousin where he bought it, but he could not recall. The next day she went out looking for this particular cap. She went to four different stores each time describing the cap and getting quizzical looks from sales clerks who had never seen one before. Several tried to sell her other Green Bay Packers hats including a few that were unique. But Dawn pressed on looking for that particular cap. Finally, in a gift shop, she found exactly what she was looking for and purchased it even though the price was significantly higher than the other Packers hats she had seen that day.
4. Toby Rosso was excited. He was waiting on the dock to go deep-sea fishing with his two brothers off the coast of Hawaii. The Captain of the boat they had chartered for the day strode up and said All Aboard to Toby and his brothers. Just then, Toby realized that he did not have a hat and it was going to be hot and very sunny on their 8-hour adventure. Toby quickly ran to the Marina Store. He found a kind of stupid-looking overpriced baseball cap but it was the only one sold at the store. So he bought it and was thankful at the end of the day.
5. Lindsey Wilson was a proud alumnus of Colorado State University. She liked to collect all kinds of memorabilia from her alma mater. Now living in France, she shopped at the school bookstore when she visited Colorado every few years. By now she already owned several t-shirts, sweatshirts, a football jersey, a basketball, a glass ram paperweight and so much more. She kept her collection at her parents house in Denver. An art gallery in Fort Collins (where the university is located) had an artist who hand-painted top hats (think Abe Lincoln-style tall hats) with various scenes from the university and its sports teams. This is the kind of thing Lindsey would have loved, but she never visited this gallery to know about them.
6. Hope Jekubovich was shopping in her local supermarket, she came upon an end-of-aisle display with several different types of beach hats. She had not thought about buying a beach hat but remembered that her nieces were going to be in town the next day. She thought maybe they would like the hats for playing in the backyard it was supposed to be warm and sunny the following day. So she looked through various hats, found two she thought her nieces would like, and dropped them into her shopping cart.

Willing to expend effort to get specific product, even if not necessary; strong preferences make it an important purchase; Internet becoming important information source. Need for product not strongly felt; unaware of benefits or not yet gone through adoption process. Aware of product but not interested; attitude toward product may even be negative