Hi, all,

I was just confronted with another sentence:

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When you can structure your product offering to enhance the status, respect, and prestige of another person, you can touch on this deep need and can oftern trigger buying desire.
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Here, should I understand "product offering" as the object of the verb "structure"? Or one the contrary, "product" is the object and "offering" the complement, so it means you structure your product, and by structuring you can offer to do something?

Is there such phrase as "product offering"? If so, what does it mean?

Thanks. I hope I didn't ask too many questions so often.

"Product offering" is a noun phrase. It means the thing that you are selling. It also indicates that this is something you have made yourself.

"Structure" is the verb. "Product offering" is, as you guessed, the object of the verb.

One warning; this is a very bizspeak sentence and might be attacked on this basis, but if you are translating it you have to go with what you have.

Looking over the sentence, I'm not so sure that there is an implication that you have made the product offering. I'm thinking that "structure" in this sentence means that you can advertise it in such a way that people will understand it in a new way. An example might be the suggestion that drinking a certain soft drink will cause attractive people of the opposite sex to think you are a desirable partner.

Marketing is a minefield of "biz-speak".

A product offering is not only the thing but the way it is presented, packaged, marketed,... It could even refer to a range of related products. I wouldn't say it has anything to do with making it yourself.

Structured could have to do with setting price points, profit margins, etc., for example do you lose money on the razor handle and make it up on selling the refill blades. For an array of products, it could deal with how the different products in the range relate to each other, for example do you have products in the offering that appeal to different demographic groups or is it "one size fits all".

A product offering is not only the thing - I very much agree with this. Nowadays marketers tend to emphasize what their product does rather than what it is, presenting it as a solution (for a problem which you hadn't been aware of until now..)

what a coincidence.(I borrowed this phrase from tsuwm's post. Acclamations!)

In right this book, the author also devotes a section to talk about "does" versus "is". And the author concludes the same as you.

Have you ever considered to commit your findings to paper, too? I could translate them to Chinese. I'm serious.

Have you ever considered to commit your findings to paper, too?
Thank you for the flattering comment. In fact, during my working life I have always been "on the other side" from the marketing people, i.e. in Research. My impressions were due simply to the observation of how advertising in newspapers etc. has changed in style over the years.

That 'product offering' is an obvious marketing buzz-phrase to anyone used to seeing it. The meaning could have shifted with a comma placed, as in "When you can structure your product, offering to enhance the status, respect...". Otherwise 'product offering' is not simply a thing to sell, but in the marketing world, a package that can be monkeyed with in myriad ways. The look of any laundry soap box is no accident.

Or what about this?

"When you can, structure your product. Offering to enhance the status? Respect "and-prestige" of another person you can. Touch on this deep need, and can often. Trigger buying desire."

Oh. Maybe I'm already soaked in the selling buzz-words for too long.