Product (Meaning and Explanation)

We explain what a product is in economics, its types and characteristics. Furthermore, the product in chemistry and mathematics.

What is a product?

In the world of economics and business, a product It is the good or service obtained at the end of the production chain that is, from the transformation of raw materials into manufactured goods or services to be provided.

Everything around us has been produced in one way or another, natural or artificial, thanks to human intervention. Even if the latter is limited to collection or extraction. And for that reason, today, practically everything is a product, comparable to a good.

In the commercial circuit, products are manufactured, distributed and finally consumed by natural persons and legal entities that need them, in exchange for the payment of their price in money or credit.

To do this, it must compete with other products from other companies. For this reason, marketing is responsible for making it visible, considering it one of its “four Ps” or fundamental aspects: product, place, price and promotion.

Now, products as such can be objects of a very diverse nature, tangible or intangible, from goods, services, ideas, experiences, events, property rights or shares in a company, to name just a few examples.

Product types

Products can be classified as tangible or intangible, depending on whether they are physical things or not. On the other hand, according to their purpose or “purchase situation”, they are classified as:

Consumer goods Of limited usability, they are consumed quickly and have a short life, like food, fruits, groceries, etc.
Services Activities, uses and benefits that are consumed at the time of service, such as hair cutting, housework, appliance repairs, etc.
Common use goods Those products that are part of the usual basket and are consumed quickly, such as textiles, shoes, etc.
Emergency goods Products that citizens consume in extraordinary situations, but that are normally available in case of need, such as fire extinguishers, spare parts for appliances, etc.
Durable goods Products with a very long life cycle, whose need for replacement spans years or even decades.
Specialty goods Those goods with very particular characteristics intended for a hyper-specific consumer market, such as medical supplies, military technology, etc.

Features of a product

product packaging — The packaging not only contains the product, it also makes it attractive.

Most products have some of the following attributes:

Formulations and ingredients Those substances and materials from which they are made, and which should normally be reflected on the packaging, so that the consumer can know what they are consuming. This is particularly true in the case of consumer goods, since in other types of goods it is not as important, such as steel products.
Dimensions and physical characteristics Products have a set of physical characteristics (size, density, thickness, etc.) that characterize them, especially those produced in series, and that normally obey standardizations such as ISO standards, for example.
Components and functions All products serve a purpose, that is, they satisfy some need, either thanks to their specific components (as in the case of medicines and their active ingredients), or their general formulation.
Packaging and presentation Every product is offered in some type of packaging or container, that is, in a container that protects it until it reaches the final consumer. In some cases, such packaging or containers may themselves be the product.
Finitude and relative scarcity All products are finite, that is, they require a continuous and constant production process, without which they would simply end. This means that they are relatively rare, although our need for them may be, in general, infinite.

Product examples

Virtually everything around us is a product: from the canned and processed foods we consume, the cleaners and detergents we use to clean our homes and the drugs we use to combat illness, to the utensils we use to cook and eat, the tools and furniture in our home.

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Even basic services (electricity, telephone, Internet, sewage and garbage collection) are products that some supplier supplies us. Everything we pay for is, in one way or another, a product.

Product in chemistry

In chemistry, the term product is used with a different meaning than what we have explained so far. In this case, the product is called substances obtained through a chemical reaction of some type, in which two or more reactants intervene to form a product. This term is used regardless of the nature of the chemical obtained.

Product in mathematics

Similarly, in the field of mathematics it is common to talk about a product. In this area, the term is used only to refer to the result of certain logical-formal operations, such as multiplication or certain binary operations used in very specific contexts.

The use to call the result of multiplication is perhaps the most common, as evidenced by the adage that expresses that “the order of the factors does not alter the product.”

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