між собою і відрізняються щодо змісту, структури, викладення та доступності, ме­тодичних порад, графіків, малюнків тощо. Будь-яке місто, достатньо велике за роз­міром, має низку роздрібних крамниць, що продають чоловічий та жіночий одяг, який значно відрізняється від аналогічного одягу з крамниць іншого міста стилем, матеріалом та якістю роботи. Подібно до цього, одна з мереж закусочних швидко­го обслуговування, що торгують гамбургерами, приділяє велику увагу якості своїх булочок, які відрізняються пряним ароматом, в той час як її конкурент приділяє осо­бливу увагу якості рублених котлет.

Exercise 9.

Text 5

Services and the conditions surrounding the sale of a product are important aspects of product differentiation. One grocery store may stress the helpfulness of its clerks who bag your groceries and carry them to your car. A ‘warehouse’ competitor may leave the bag­ging and carrying to its customers, but feature lower prices. ‘One-day’ clothes cleaning is frequently preferred to cleaning of roughly equal quality which takes three days. The ‘snob appeal’ of a store, the courteousness and helpfulness of clerks, the firms reputation for servicing or exchanging its products, and the availability of credit are all service aspects of product differentiation.

Products may also be differentiated on the basis of location and accessibility. Small minigroceries or convenience stores successfully compete with large supermarkets, even though the former have a much more limited range of products and charge significantly higher prices. They compete on the basis of location - being close to customers and being situated on much-traveled streets - and by staying open 24 hours a day. Similarly, a gas station’s close proximity to the interstate highway gives it a locational advantage which allows it to sell gasoline at a higher price than could a gas station in a town two or three miles from the interstate.

Text 6

Product differentiation may also arise from largely imaginary differences created through advertising, packaging, and the use of brand names and trademarks. The asso­ciation of a celebrity’s name with such products as jeans or perfume may enhance those products in the eyes of buyers. Many consumers regard a given toothpaste packaged in a ‘pump’ container to be preferable to the same toothpaste in a conventional tube. While there are a variety of aspirin-type products, product promotion and advertising may con­vince many consumers that Bayer or Anacin is superior and worth a substantially higher price than a generic substitute.

One important implication of product differentiation is that, despite the presence of a relatively large numbers of firms, monopolistically competitive producers do have lim­ited amounts of control over the prices of their products. Consumers have preferences for the products of specific sellers and within limits will pay a higher price to satisfy those preferences. Sellers and buyers are no longer linked at random, as in a purely competitive market.

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