Attributes-Benefits Chart

Published in LaZOOZ - Strategy, Marketing and Innovation Newsletter, Issue 52, By Ari Manor, CEO, ZOOZ

If the industry you are currently in, meaning the market in which you are competing, is too competitive and crowded, and you don't foresee any significant growth there for you, the time may have arrived for you to look for other industries in which you can grow. Before you go about doing so however, take into account that even if the grass on the other side seems greener, it's not always that way. Therefore, before deciding to expand to a new industry and market, you have to thoroughly examine the new market - its growth rate, the competitors, the degree of profitability, the entrance obstacles that you must overcome, and to what extent the new industry leverages your abilities.

Here are several options and related remarks for entering a new market:

• Write down good (and objective) attributes of these types of products
• Only write down objective attributes that can be proven unequivocally (for example - write "a car door with a steel beam", but don't write "a safety door").
• Only write attributes that customers would consider good (do not write negative attributes, they don't help us identify positive benefits...).
• Write as many of these attributes as possible for your product or your competitors' products (also write positive attributes that your competitors' products have but that yours do not).
• For example - attributes in the "yoghurt" category: contains bio bacteria, pasteurized, made from goat's milk, contains 42 flavors, 30 calories per container, 3% fat, 1 L containers, reusable lid, has cornflakes topping, kosher, etc.

• Write subjective benefits (from a consumer's perspective) stemming from the above-mentioned attributes
• You have to go through each attribute and think of benefits for each one ("What does the consumer get out of this?").
• Some of the attributes lead to the same benefit, and some of the attributes lead to several benefits.
• At this stage, the purpose is to generate as many different benefits as possible.
• For example - The above list of yoghurt properties yields the following benefits: healthy, tasty, variety, dietetic, convenient, useful, family-size, kosher, reliable, etc.

• Arrange the benefits in groups that have similar meanings
• Group together benefits with similar meanings.
• For example: dietetic, healthy, | kosher, reliable | useful, convenient, family-sized | variety, tasty.

• From each group of benefits, choose the one that consumers will consider most important
• Give precedence to words that customers will state as reasons for choosing the product.
• For example: healthy | reliable | convenient | tasty.

• Choose one important benefit from the remaining benefits that is available and suits your capabilities
• Important = important to more customers (and will therefore lead to greater demand and higher sales).
• Available = has not been taken by competitors (the competitors do not focus on it in their advertising, and customers do not ascribe it to a competing product).
• Suits your capabilities = You have or may potentially have in the future an advantage pertaining to the proposed benefit, and customers will be willing to believe it.
• An example of benefits ascribed to yoghurt brands: Danone - healthy; Yoplait - tasty.

Once you have decided what benefits you want to emphasize about your product, you have a strategic direction. You must now act in a variety of ways to create associations for your product to the selected benefit, in the customers' minds (for example - to associate your yoghurt with the word "healthy" or "tasty"). Such an association is called positioning, and it is implemented, among other things, using innovation (developing new changes that support the benefit you chose) and marketing communication (that accentuates this benefit). We described the process of positioning in a previous issue.