These five product levels constitute the customer-value hierarchy.

Core Product
The core product is the basic need or benefit that the product is trying to meet or deliver. From the customer’s perspective, why is the customer buying
this product?

Actual Product
The actual product is the overall product design to include all the product features.

Expected Product
The expected product includes the basic expectations of the product from the consumer. The expected product becomes the checkpoint to consider the completeness of the product offering. Category points-of-parity (POPs) make up the expected product. Category POPs are essential to a legitimate offering in a product category.

Augmented Product
The augmented product is the additional supporting services and features that increases the set of benefits available to the consumer. The augmented product exceeds customer expectations.

Potential Product
The potential product considers how the product can be modified in the future. In order to generate future sales from existing customers. This may include additional product improvements and enhancements over time that provide some form of additional benefits to the consumer.

Questions
1. Select a service product and Rice Life as a product. For each of the products (service of choice and Rice Life), outline how the five product levels could be structured.

2. How helpful is it for a marketer to split the product into these different product levels?

3. Is the five-level product model superior to the three-level model for planning product strategy? The three-level model includes the core, actual, and augmented product.

These five product levels constitute the customer-value hierarchy....