24 Mar 10 Product Life Cycle 101

Product life cycle (PLC) is an important marketing matrix that tells you about the status of your product and actions needed to be taken. According to PLC matrix, the life of a product can be divided into four stages.

• Introduction
• Growth
• Maturity
• Decline

Let’s examine each one of them one by one.    

Introduction

This is the phase when the product is introduced to the market after successful market testing. In this stage demand tends to be low because of low awareness in the market. Promotion spending is high, and distribution is not very deep.

Growth

Growth follows introduction. In this phase the demand for the product or category rises. Awareness of the brand is high, and you need to maintain the promotion budget to maintain the top of mind recall. This is the ideal phase for a product. The longer a product lives in this phase the profitable it become. Distribution is comparatively deeper. One should strive to make the product available at as many places as one can.

Maturity

This is the third phase in the product life cycle, which every product and category has to pass through. This is the stage in which the demand for a product is not rising. Either everyone already has the product or they have tried it already. A surge in product sales is not possible. The company needs to maintain the momentum until the new product design and development team comes up with an innovation.

Decline

This is the final stage. The demand of the product in this stage is almost zero. The company cuts down on advertising expenditure to save the cost. Due to falling demand distributors have started dropping the product. This may happen because of the changed needs or product substitute or improved competitor’s products, etc.

What after decline?

Your product will either die in the dark alley of oblivion, or it will get reinvented. This depends upon the approach management of the company takes. A product not necessarily dies. Many get reinvented.

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