Marketing
Product Life Cycle- Overview
Every product has a life cycle. And every product class has a life cycle. The life cycle is generally broken down into four parts. A graphical representation of the Product Life Cycle is shown below:
The four stages are defined as: (From a business to consumer B2C point of view.) (Added links for further explanation of each stage.)
- Introduction- Here the company tries to educate the consumer about how the product works, why its needed and work on distribution of the product.
- Growth- Now that consumers know more about the product, companies try to build brand loyalty and increase their market share.
- Maturity- Sales begins to slow and competitors appear to have the same or similar product. Companies are trying to defend market share.
- Decline- A product may become obsolete, need to be revamped or just continues to make sales. Some products do not face being obsolete.
The picture shows one way a product life cycle may evolve. Sometimes it may cycle back and forth between maturity and growth due to innovations of ideas. Where is Your product on this curve? Just because it is in the Introduction or Decline stage, doesn’t mean you should or shouldn’t be marketing the product.
In future posts I will talk about each stage in more detail.
Know the Life Cycle,
Sam Carrara
Once Is Not Enough
How many times should I get my message out to my prospect? The answer is the same for Gen Y, Gen X, Baby Boomers, Etc.
J. Conrad Levinson writes in his Guerrilla Marketing book that it actually takes nine (9) times for the ad’s message to run before it sinks in.
Let’s look at the progress… › Continue reading
Taking Marketing Education Mobile
In the continual growth of this Marketing Education space, I have decided to make the site viewable on mobile phones. So if your cell phone has a WAP browser, then you will automatically see these posts properly formatted for it.
Try the page out (on your Bob the Builder cell phone above) and let me know if you want anything added. Just post a comment and we’ll see what we can do…
Going Mobile,
Sam Carrara
