The owner of an IELTS prep centre in Almaty saw a competitor's "7.0 Guarantee" ad and came back once more to the idea of promising a score. Next to it on his list are a free Saturday speaking club, branded notebooks and an "online groups coming soon" line on the site. The marketer suggests first breaking the course down into levels. Then it becomes clear where the centre wins, where it merely keeps up with everyone else, and where it promises something that does not exist yet. The numbers in this lesson are illustrative.
Five levels of one course
In Philip Kotler and Kevin Keller's textbook Marketing Management (15th edition, Pearson, 2016), a product is broken into five levels: the core benefit, the basic product, the expected, the augmented and the potential product. Each level adds value for the buyer on top of the one before. For the centre they look like this:
| Level | Question | At the centre |
|---|---|---|
| Core benefit | Why does the person pay at all? | To get into a university abroad, and for that, to reach the required score by the application deadline |
| Basic product | What do they get for the money? | A three-month course: group classes, materials, a teacher, mock exams |
| Expected product | What must it have to be considered at all? | Classes on schedule with no rescheduling, a teacher who knows the exam format, a free trial lesson |
| Augmented product | How does the centre differ from the other options? | A study plan built back from the exam date, a review of speaking answers |
| Potential product | What could the course become later? | An online group for people who live too far away: the centre is discussing it but has not launched it |
The core benefit is what the person is really buying: admission. The course is just one way of getting there, alongside self-study with books and YouTube or a tutor, which is why the centre gets compared with such different options. "7.0 Guarantee" promises that benefit outright, but the score depends above all on the student, and in its value proposition the centre promises only what it answers for itself.
The OpenStax textbook uses three levels: the core product, the actual product and the augmented product. Same idea with a coarser split, and no potential level. On a project, pick one scheme and do not mix levels from different ones.
The picture shows the same five levels for a lunch delivery service.
Expected or augmented: the line moves
The most useful question the model asks is what in your product is expected and what is augmented. The answer decides what your ads should talk about. The expected gets noticed only when it is missing: without a free trial lesson the centre drops out of the comparison, but nobody will choose it for the trial lesson either. You win on the augmented level.
The market decides where the line runs: when the centre checked its positioning statement against competitors, two out of three offered a free trial lesson, and nobody promised a plan built from the exam date. So at the centre the trial lesson is expected, and the plan stays an augmentation until everyone starts promising it.
The line also depends on the segment. An applicant needs to be ready by the exam date, so classes without rescheduling are a must for them. A schoolchild learning English "for later" has no date, and the parents decide for them, expecting something else: a long course with no exam deadline and progress updates for them rather than for the child. Levels are always laid out for one segment.
Expected first, augmented second
Back to the owner's list, sorted by level. Every add-on is measured against the same 16,000 ₸ a month the centre keeps per student.
| Idea | Level | What we know about applicants | Cost to the centre |
|---|---|---|---|
| A score guarantee of our own | Core benefit | They want the score, but it depends above all on them | Disputes and refunds if the score is missed |
| A free Saturday speaking club | Augmented | They raised pauses in speaking themselves | Say 40,000 ₸ a month for a teacher's Saturday hours |
| Branded notebooks | Augmented | Nobody mentioned them | Little, but nobody will choose by them |
| "Online groups coming soon" on the site | Potential | Some people live too far away | A promise the centre cannot keep yet |
The guarantee goes straight away: it promises a core benefit the centre does not control. The notebooks are an augmentation nobody asked for. That leaves the club and the online group, and those are more interesting.
The club at least responds to something applicants raised themselves. But an augmentation is an obligation: promise a club and you run it every Saturday. At 40,000 ₸ a month, the club pays off only if every month the centre has at least three more paying students than it would without the club: 40,000 / 16,000 = 2.5. The CRM can track this: whether the club comes up in the "why did you choose us" field, and whether the people who attend it stay to the third month. Compare with care: the most diligent students are the ones who go to the club, and they would have finished the course anyway.
And before adding the club, look at the expected level. If classes were moved this month, a Saturday club will not make up for it: a person who was not ready by their date will not remember the free club. The expected gets fixed first; without it the customer leaves, and no augmentation will keep them.
A potential product is not sold in advance
An online group looks like a direct answer for the people who live too far away. When the centre sorted its losses by the 7P, seven of the 24 applicants who submitted the form and did not come to a trial lesson gave exactly that reason. But until the group exists, it is a potential product. It needs a teacher and its own way of running speaking reviews and mock exams.
An "online groups coming soon" line turns a plan into a promise. Someone from a distant district submits the form for the online group, the manager says there is no group yet, and the centre loses that person a second time, now with resentment on top. Demand can be gauged without promising anything. To people who live too far away, the manager replies: "We don't have an online group yet. Shall we put you on a list and message you if we fill one?" If within a month the list grows to the size of one group, the owner has grounds to open it. Meanwhile the site and the ads stick to what exists now: classes in the city centre.
Where the model misleads
The model sorts what already exists or is planned, but does not say what to build next: money and the CRM will show whether a teacher's Saturday hours pay off. And five levels read like a ladder to climb. The "what else could we add" list grows faster than the centre can deliver the expected, even though every augmentation costs money and creates an obligation, and the potential level keeps trying to creep into the ads ahead of time.
The sorting itself is the seller's view too. The buyer does not think in levels but compares options, so levels are set by competitors' ads and customers' words, not in a meeting.
Exercise: five levels of your own product
Any product will do where you know at least three competitors and have heard what customers say. If you have already chosen a segment for it, lay out the levels for that segment.
If the core benefit matches the name of the service ("IELTS course", "coffee delivery"), you have described the basic product. Ask yourself why a person buys it and write the answer in their words: "to get into university", "a morning pick-me-up without leaving home".
If the expected is nearly empty and the augmented is a long list, check whether some of the augmented is also offered by competitors. Anything you find at two out of three moves to the expected: it is the price of entry. An augmentation no customer has ever mentioned can stay on the site, but do not build ads around it.
For payback, divide the idea's monthly cost by what you keep per customer per month and round up. At the centre that is 40,000 / 16,000 = 2.5, so every month it needs at least three more paying students than it would have without the club.
Video: the five product levels
The video has its own examples, but sorting your own product into the levels is the more useful exercise.