Specialty products are consumer products and services with unique characteristics or brand identification for which a significant group of buyers is willing to make a special purchase effort.

The brand’s positioning will not take hold fully unless everyone in the company lives the brand. Therefore the company needs to train its people to be customer-centered.

Canada Dry and Colgate-Palmolive have appointed brand equity managers to maintain and protect their brand’s images, associations, and quality, and to prevent short-term actions by over-eager brand managers from hurting the brand.

Service intangibility means that services cannot be seen, tasted, felt, heard, or smelled before they are bought.

One risk of line extension is that sales may come at the expense of other items in the line. It works best when it takes sales away from competing brands, not when it “cannibalizes” the company’s other items.