Does the term "product" have any limitations?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Nowadays you hear of banks referring to their various credit plans as “products.” You have that guy talking about “please buy my product” in reference to his Video Professor (or whatever it is). It’s getting harder and harder to relate the notion of “product” to something that has been produced by hand or machine and which can be placed in a shopping bag.

Does this loosening of the term “product” strike you as laziness in the process of coming up with a better term for stuff folks try to sell or foist off on the public?

2

I’ll take it over “solution.”

3

I’m pretty sure that Video Professor is a set of CD-Roms, so that’s an actual product.

As for the bank… Package and Product are both becoming common descriptors for things that aren’t physical. And I don’t like it. Get off my lawn, you damn Descriptivists!