A consumer category is a group of the related products that are put together. Within our site, by organizing your products into categories can help customers explore your product options, navigate your store easily, increase sales and improve their shopping experience. It’s also a great way to demonstrate the expertise you have in your retail industry and gives a clear reason why a customer should choose to shop with you.

Consumer category marketing involves specific promotion of one or more of our customers’ content. It helps our site stand out, and provides you with clear insights into the behavior of our site visitors and the popularity (or not) of our content. It also helps showcase and promote more than one product and provides visitors with a sense of direction when they read.

Once you are confident that the SEO for your product category and organization is doing well, you will need to tailor it to a consumer product type to use the most appropriate marketing strategies.

4 types of consumer products

The product categories that you create within your retail site can be put figuratively into one of four types of consumer products, each with their own marketing best practices:

Convenience Products – These are the products that the customer buys most often. They spend very little time checking out the product and they will buy without hesitation. Examples include products such as bread, sugar and toothpaste.

Shopping products – These are products that the customer will actively compare with other similar products and are not bought often. Product types include furniture and clothing.

Niche Products – Niche products are those that have very specific characteristics that a customer is happy to make a particular effort to purchase. It takes a lot of time to research not only the products themselves, but also the brand of the product and the companies selling it. There is less comparison with similar products, as the customer is almost certain to be confident that it is the product they want to buy. Product types here include luxury cars, luxury clothing, and high-end musical instruments.

Unwanted Products – Unwanted products are those that the customer does not know or know about but is not something they would normally consider buying. These types of products are not something a customer would think of until they need them. Examples include like life insurance, puncture repair, new luxury cars, and new innovative products.

This next task is not done by your website, it is decided upon and action taken by your marketing strategies. It’s about choosing the type of consumer product in which each of your categories is best placed. Once you make that decision, it is when you create your product category marketing strategies.

There are several different ways to implement the above strategies, each of which will also depend on the types of the products within our categories. Below is a collection of related articles to help you gain more understanding, or explore your options for getting professional help.

Enjoy!