Kotler and Keller's Five Product Levels
Kotler and Keller's Five Product Levels separates what a product actually does for the customer, the core benefit, from everything wrapped around it, so you can see which layer is actually winning or losing you business.
Concentric rings spread out from the core benefit, each one wrapping another layer around what the product actually does.
Reach for this when…
- You're competing purely on price and can't see another lever.
- Customers describe your product as 'fine' - nothing wrong, nothing memorable.
- You're planning next year's roadmap and need to know which layer to invest in.
How to run it
- Name the core benefit: the fundamental need the product satisfies.
- Define the basic product: the minimum version that delivers that benefit.
- Map the expected product: what customers assume they're getting, unstated.
- Design the augmented product: what you add that exceeds the expectation.
- Sketch the potential product: what it could become as things evolve.
A worked example
Situation. Nadeeka Perera runs Perera Furnishings, a furniture manufacturer in Colombo, Sri Lanka, selling solid teak tables that customers rated fine but never mentioned to friends.
Applied. Working up the five levels, she found the expected product was already met, decent wood, decent joinery, but nothing augmented it. She added white-glove delivery, in-home assembly and a ten-year structural warranty.
Result. The augmented layer became the thing customers actually talked about. She raised prices eight percent on the same core table and volume held.
The catch
The levels are easy to state and hard to apply, because expected and augmented shift by market: what's augmented in one country is basic in another, and the line moves as competitors copy you. Treat it as a snapshot, not a permanent classification, and revisit it as your category matures.
If your 'potential product' features are really just augmented features you haven't built yet, you're not innovating, you're behind.
Origin: Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller