Consumer Goods
Consumer Goods Definition:
Consumer goods are tangible final goods, goods which can be finally consumed by the consumer, which are produced or manufactured for consumption by individuals in the mass market.
Product Range:
They come with a huge variety of products ranging from baby bottles to power equipments, nanotechnology devices, foods, clothing products, stationary, gift articles, toys, household appliances, kitchen ware, groceries, electronic goods etc.
Types of Consumer Goods
There are two types of consumer goods: durable or non-durable. Durable goods are those goods which can be used or consumed for a long time. This means they are manufactured in a way to have a long working life span. Products like automobiles, utensils, and stationary come under this category. Whereas, non durable goods are those goods which do not have long life span or which cannot be use for a long period. Products including food and clothing come under this category.
Further, consumer goods can be categorized in four categories:
- Convenience Goods: Goods which are conveniently available for purchase in a wide variety and are distributed widely are called convenience goods. They include products like fast foods, confectionaries, petrol or cigarettes.
- Shopping goods: It is a type of consumer goods where while purchasing, consumer do lot of selection based on various parameter such as cost, brand, style, comfort etc. Clothing items are best example of shopping goods as they require lot of selection by the consumer.
- Exclusive goods: Exclusive Goods are available for a very particular and high-profile category of consumer. Almost every luxury item comes under this category because the items are exclusively offered to high-income group of society.
- Non Sought goods: Goods which are might be available or known to a consumer but he is really not interested in buying them are called non-sought goods.
Big companies involved in making consumer goods in India are Hindustan Lever, Godrej, Tata Group, Jyothy Laboratories, Reliance etc.
Innovation in consumer goods:
Worldwide, multinational companies are making developments and advancements in manufacturing consumer goods to increase their market. But the innovativeness or changing frequencies of a product has reduced its life span. This means, whenever a new product is launched in the market, sooner, a new version of that product with additional features comes in the market. This effectively reduces the demand of that previous version. For example, Nokia is planning to launch its E series of product very sooner after the launch of N-series.
Although, the practice of maintaining innovation in the products has excelled competition in the market and has also increased the parameters of research and development in the field.
