Product Life Cycle: Definition, Stages and Examples 2024

Consumers began receiving notifications the year before, informing them that Microsoft would no longer support the product, as the company would focus its resources on newer technologies. The amount of time spent in the introduction phase before a company's product experiences strong growth will vary between industries and products. Sales tend to be lower, promotional pricing may be low to drive customer engagement, marketing spending is high, and the sales strategy is still being evaluated.

Responding before the product begins its decline

The pricing strategy during the growth stage may be adjusted to capitalize on the product's success, with the company increasing or decreasing prices depending on market conditions. Another unfortunate side effect of the product life cycle is prospective or planned obsolescence. When a product enters the maturity stage, a company may be tempted to begin planning its replacement.

Product Management and Strategy

It all starts with a flexible, single source of truth to keep projects on track. By 1929, Woolworth had about 2,250 outlet stores across the United States and Britain. Decades later, due to increased competition from other discount retailers, Woolworth closed the last of its variety stores in the United States in 1997 to focus on sporting goods. The said information is neither owned by BFL nor it is to the exclusive knowledge of BFL. There may be inadvertent inaccuracies or typographical errors or delays in updating the said information. Hence, users are advised to independently exercise diligence by verifying complete information, including by consulting experts, if any.

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It is essential for developing strategies, promoting, and marketing the product depending on the stages. If understood and followed accurately, it helps in the product’s success. It helps managers understand and develop results-driven strategies for their products to enter and exit each stage effectively.

Products Portfolio

A new product can be promoted as what is the product life cycle stages and examples a ground-breaking or an improvement on existing products, while an established product can be promoted based on a long, successful and trusted history in the marketplace. The product life cycle can be used across your business from advertising to pricing and innovation to marketing. Many companies will begin to move onto different ventures as market saturation means there is no longer any profit to be gained. Of course, some companies will survive the decline and may continue to offer the product but production is likely to be on a smaller scale and prices and profit margins may become depressed.

At that point, all similar products are more likely to have shorter product life cycles. The failure comes only after investing substantial money and time into research, development, and production. Instead, he said, they wait for someone else to succeed and then clone the success.

Launches

After its launch, Coca-Cola's phone line began receiving 1,500 calls per day, many of which were to complain about the change. Protest groups recruited 100,000 individuals to support their cause of bringing "old" Coke back. After merging with General Motors in 1908, the company used the first V-8 engine in 1916.

At that time, it pioneered technological advancements for a compact mobile phone. If the first stage is successful, you will see a sharp rise in the second stage. You can witness a huge spike in the growth curve as you have successfully passed the first stage with flying colors.

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With careful planning and execution, the introduction stage can set the product on a path to success, laying the foundation for growth and profitability in the later stages of the product life cycle. This is the phase where a company begins to become more efficient and learns from the mistakes made in the introduction and growth stages. Marketing campaigns are typically focused on differentiation rather than awareness. This means that product features might be enhanced, prices might be lowered, and distribution becomes more intensive. The product life cycle is the succession of stages that a product goes through during its existence, starting from development and ultimately ending in decline.

• For innovative products, a market may not be presently available but we know there is potential.
• During this stage, the marketing team is focused on creating awareness about the product to reach the target audience.
• When a fairly new product is launched in the market, not much is known about it to the general public.
• Now that you understand the four stages of a product life cycle, let us clarify the understanding with a few examples.
• The product life cycle provides a framework for understanding the performance of a product over time, including its introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

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In this stage, price undercutting and increased promotional efforts are common as companies try to capture customers from competitors. Due to fierce competition, weaker competitors will eventually exit the marketplace – the shake-out. The strongest players in the market remain to saturate and dominate the stable market.

One way to do this is by allocating resources to digital marketing channels like social media advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and influencer partnerships. Then, leverage data analytics to target and reach your ideal customers effectively. During this phase, marketing campaigns often shift from getting customers’ buy-in to establishing a brand presence so consumers choose them over developing competitors. The standardized phase would involve an influx of competitors, which would lead the company to focus on driving down production and manufacturing costs to remain competitive.

• Holding an MBA in Marketing, Hitesh manages several offline ventures, where he applies all the concepts of Marketing that he writes about.
• In industries such as oil and gas, petrochemicals, and energy, the introduction stage involves presenting the newly designed product to the market.
• From its initial concept to eventual decline, every product goes through a series of phases collectively known as the Product Life Cycle (PLC).
• One way to do this is by allocating resources to digital marketing channels like social media advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, and influencer partnerships.

There are no benefits from economies of scale, as production capacity is not maximized. Vernon stated that products in international markets had three phases; new products, maturing products, and standardised products. He believed that products would perform best in their country of origin as this would keep manufacturing and production costs low. However, once demand increased, companies can start exporting to other countries, as well as building local production plants in each new location.

At the bottom of this stage is extinction, which obviously isn’t desirable. This period can also be referred to as the golden period for companies. Due to increased sales, there is an opportunity to open many more new distribution channels and retail outlets. So when you are constantly fulfilling the market's demand, you're constantly producing new products too. This could result in increased profits, attracting new competitors with cheaper rates and sometimes new technological advancements.