Understanding Product Life Cycle (Knowledge)

Once a Day Marketing™ featured video blog: Product Life Cycle

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy for Once a Day Marketing™.  Today we are discussing the classic product life cycle and how that impacts your marketing.

Products evolve a lot like people.  They are born, grow, mature, age and then pass on.  There are four stages to the classic product life cycle: introduction, growth, maturity and decline.

Introduction is when an idea is transformed into a product that is introduced into the market place.  Production and marketing costs are initially high and profits may be low at the outset.

Next is growth.  Sales are climbing, consumers are adopting the product and the company is beginning to make a profit.

In the Maturity phase the product is established in the market place.  Sales are still climbing but profits are declining because competitors have now entered the market.  Other companies latch on to the original product and emulate it, resulting in reduced market share.  In this phase, before the product slides into decline, marketers have to consider how they are going to remarket this product.

During the Decline stage, when sales and profits are falling off, a business has to evaluate whether they want to reinvent the product or retire it and bring a new innovation into the market place.

You can alter your marketing strategy anywhere during the stages based on the marketing mix that is required at that time.  At introduction perhaps you employ more promotion strategies and later on move into leveraging pricing strategies.

Remember that the life cycle is different for every product.  Some may see sales rise rapidly and then decline while others may take longer.  You have to be the expert in analyzing your own product life cycle to determine the marketing strategies that are the best fit for your product.

Once a Day Marketing™ positions brands to become #1 in the minds of target customers.  Visit our website at www.onceadaymarketing.com. Contact James Glover at (505) 501-1330 or email glover@onceadaymarketing.com.  Listen to Ask Those Branding Guys™ every Monday at 11:00am (MT) streaming live on SantaFe.com KVSF 101.5 FM.

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