In light of the log-Brunn-Minkowski conjecture, various attempts have been made to define the geometric means of convex bodies. Many of these constructions are fairly complex and/or fail to satisfy some natural properties one would expect of such a mean. To improve our understanding of potential geometric mean definitions, we study the closely related p-means of convex bodies, with the usual definition extended to two series ranging over all p in [-∞,∞]. We characterize their equality cases and obtain (in almost all instances tight) inequalities that quantify how well these means approximate each other. Based on our findings, we propose a fairly simple definition of the geometric mean that satisfies the properties considered in recent literature, and discuss potential axiomatic characterizations. Finally, we conclude that some of these properties are incompatible with approaches to proof the log-Brunn-Minkowski conjecture via geometric means.