A Melaleuca customer’s needs, wants and demands advocate the existence of products which are appealing. I define an appealing product as a product, is anything that can be offered to a consumer for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that will satisfy a want or need.

For instance, lets consider a person who feels a desire to be more attractive. Lets call all the associated products capable of satisfying this need, the choice product group. These products may include new clothes, hair cut, weight loss, vacation, a new car and many others. Understandably, these products are not all equally desirable. Products such as clothes or hair style are likely to be purchased first due to accessibility and cost.

We can represent graphically, a specific product and a specific human want, as two unique circles. The circles represent the product’s want-satisfying attribute by the percentage that each circle covers the other. If the circles do not touch, that product has no want-satisfying ability. If the circles touch or overlap, for example 10%, that product has little want-satisfying ability. If the circles overlap completely or nearly-completely that product would be called an ideal product.

Marketers are interested in the concept of an ideal product because the closer a product matches the consumer’s desire, the more successful the sales will be. Suppose a chocolate manufacturer asks a customer how much creaminess and sweetness he or she likes in the chocolate. And suppose the consumer’s response is represented graphically by conditions that would indicate an ideal product. Now the consumer is asked to taste three competitive brands of chocolate and record each products level of creaminess and sweetness.

We would infer that the potential consumer would prefer a product whose want-satisfaction overlapped nearly 70% or higher. This result is the indictor that the ideal levels of the two attributes the consumer wants, in this case; creaminess and sweetness are present in the sample. If another chocolate manufacturer offered a chocolate product closer to the consumer’s ideal than the original sample, the new brand must out sell the original, providing awareness, price, availability, and other conditions are identical. The significance is that manufacturers or distributors should determine the consumer group they want to sell to and should provide a product or service that comes as close as possible to satisfying this group’s ideal.

How does a manufacturer or distributor determine what is idea for a given market? Large companies purchase outsourcing services that collect, analyze and report consumer preference data. Smaller companies may invite a focus group to the manufacturing facility or an offsite facility to conduct what is known as in-house testing. A small or start up business can gather this information from economical surveys using services found thru a Google search.

The concept of product is not limited to material objects. Anything capable of satisfying a need can be identified as a product. In addition, goods and services can include social groups, destinations, associations, activities, and opinions. A potential consumer ultimately chooses which cable network to watch, vacation plans and activities, groups to donate to, and education to seek out. From the consumer’s point of view, these are alternative products. If the term product seems unnatural at times, we can substitute the term satisfier, resource, or offer. All of these terms describe something of value to someone.

Successful Melaleuca business owners will identify a primary market initially. Once a primary market is established, alternative markets need to be sought out for continuous growth and expansion. These practices are universal for any product or service and will ultimately reveal the success and profitability of the Melaleuca marketers efforts.