Except for gifts, people will rarely buy a new product or service unless they feel that it has some specific benefits that are important to them. Many business ventures have succeeded because they provided meaningful benefits that were clearly recognized by their customers. This chapter provides an example of how Philips identified its product’s most significant benefit and created something new around that benefit, and then how the company used positioning to communicate this benefit. You should always make a point of finding out what benefits potential customers feel they will get from your product or service. You want to know specifically what these benefits are and why they are important to your customers.
Philips Lighting Company, headquartered in Somerset, New Jersey, is the U.S. lightbulb division of PhilipsElectronics NorthAmericaCorporation. In 1998 themanagement of Philips LightingCompany decided to try tomake a significant impact on the consumer lightbulb market. It began this effort by doing some seriousmarket research to see what was really important to consumers of lightbulbs. The idea was to find out what benefits consumers wanted, then provide those benefits and wrap an entire marketing program around them. The result was an incredibly successful marketing plan.