explain how marketing strategy varies over the course of the product life cycle.

by Ruthe Lubowitz 10 min read

The product life cycle contains four distinct stages: introduction, growth, maturity and decline. Each stage is associated with changes in the product's marketing position. You can use various marketing strategies in each stage to try to prolong the life cycle of your products.

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What is the life cycle of a marketing strategy?

for marketing strategies at various stages of the product life cycle. Some of the more common recommendations are: 1. Advertising- According to Forrester (1961), in the introductory stage, advertising informs customers about the existence, advantages, and uses of new products. During the growth

How do you develop marketing strategies for a product?

Product Life Cycle refers to the entire process that a product has to go through from the time it is launched into the market until the time it is taken off from the market and is divided into four stages – introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. This concept is predominantly used by marketing professionals along with the management team because it is seen as the precursor …

What happens during the maturity stage of the product life cycle?

12 rows · A product life cycle (PLC) is the course that a product’s sales and profits take over its ...

Is your marketing strategy ready for the growth stage?

ADVERTISEMENTS: Introduction: Product passes through four stages of its life cycle. Every stage poses different opportunities and challenges to the marketer. Each of stages demands the unique or distinguished set of marketing strategies. A marketer should watch on its sales and market situations to identify the stage in which the product is passing through, and […]

How do marketing strategies change during the product life cycle?

The product life cycle contains four distinct stages: introduction, growth, maturity and decline. Each stage is associated with changes in the product's marketing position. You can use various marketing strategies in each stage to try to prolong the life cycle of your products.

What is the relationship between product life cycle and marketing mix?

Product Life Cycle. A new product progresses through a sequence of stages from introduction to growth, maturity, and decline. This sequence is known as the product life cycle and is associated with changes in the marketing situation, thus impacting the marketing strategy and the marketing mix.

Why do marketers need to know about the product life cycle strategies?

The product life-cycle is an important tool for marketers, management and designers alike. It specifies four individual stages of a product's life and offers guidance for developing strategies to make the best use of those stages and promote the overall success of the product in the marketplace.Sep 20, 2016

What are product life cycle strategies?

What is Product Life Cycle – Marketing Techniques Used to Improve Sales: Advertising, Price Reduction, Adding Value, Explore New Markets and New Packaging. These strategies extend the life of the product before it goes into decline. Again businesses use marketing techniques to improve sales.

What is the marketing mix strategy?

The marketing mix in marketing strategy: Product, price, place and promotion. The marketing mix is the set of controllable, tactical marketing tools that a company uses to produce a desired response from its target market. It consists of everything that a company can do to influence demand for its product.

Which the best strategy should an organization use when its products are currently in the declining stage of the product's life cycle?

RetrenchmentRetrenchment. This strategy can be used by an organization when its products are currently in the declining stage of the...

What strategies do marketers develop to extend the maturity stage of their products?

Marketing Strategies for Maturity Stage:To Do Nothing: To do nothing can be an effective marketing strategy in the maturity stage. ... Market Modification: This strategy is aimed at increasing sales by raising the number of brand users and the usage rate per user. ... Product Modification: ... Marketing Mix Modification:

How does knowing and understanding the life cycle of a product affect marketing strategies of products?

A product's life cycle is its progress from when it is created to when it is discontinued. There are four stages in the cycle, which are development, growth, maturity, and decline. The product life cycle helps business owners manage sales, determine prices, predict profitability, and compete with other businesses.Aug 22, 2017

What are marketing strategies in business?

A marketing strategy refers to a business's overall game plan for reaching prospective consumers and turning them into customers of their products or services. A marketing strategy contains the company's value proposition, key brand messaging, data on target customer demographics, and other high-level elements.

What is the product life cycle stages and examples?

The life cycle has four stages—introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. While some products may remain in a prolonged maturity state for some time, all products eventually phase out of the market due to several factors including saturation, increased competition, decreased demand, and dropping sales.Oct 29, 2021

What is the example of product life cycle?

To that end, established products like Starbucks coffee and Apple iPhones are examples of good product life cycle management as well. The product is constantly updated to make it feel fresh to consumers, beating the competition and postponing the transition to the decline stage of the life cycle.

What is the marketing objective for the growth stage of the product life cycle?

The idea is to differentiate the company's brand from those of its competitors. The marketing objective in the growth stage is to stress points of difference. The goal is to build market share by highlighting the superior characteristics of the product versus competitive products (stress differentiation).

What is the introduction stage of a product?

1. Introduction Stage. When a product first launches, sales will typically be low and grow slowly. In this stage, company profit is small (if any) as the product is new and untested. The introduction stage requires significant marketing efforts, as customers may be unwilling or unlikely to test the product.

How to market a new product?

The underlying goal in the introduction stage is to gain widespread product recognition and stimulate trials of the product by consumers. Marketing efforts should be focused on the customer base of innovators – those most likely to buy a new product. There are two price-setting strategies in the introduction stage: 1 Price skimming: Charging an initially high price and gradually reducing (“skimming”) the price as the market grows. 2 Price penetration: Establishing a low price to quickly enter the marketplace and capture market share, before increasing prices relative to market growth.

What is an oligopolistic market?

Oligopolistic Market The primary idea behind an oligopolistic market (an oligopoly) is that a few companies rule over many in a particular market or industry, as it enters, becomes established, and exits the marketplace. In other words, the product life cycle describes the stages that a product is likely to experience.

How are economies of scale realized?

Economies of scale are realized as sales revenues increase faster than costs and production reaches capacity. Competition in the growth stage is often fierce, as competitors introduce similar products. In the growth stage, the market grows, competition intensifies, sales rise, and the number of customers increases.

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CFI offers the Financial Modeling & Valuation Analyst (FMVA)™#N#Become a Certified Financial Modeling & Valuation Analyst (FMVA)®#N#certification program for those looking to take their careers to the next level. To keep learning and advancing your career, the following CFI resources will be helpful:

What is the AIDA model?

AIDA Model. AIDA Model The AIDA model, which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action model, is an advertising effect model that identifies the stages that an individual. Beachhead Strategy.

What is the product life cycle?

The underlying principle of the product life cycle is fairly simple – as a product grows old, it tends to become less popular, while the demand for a new and up-to-date product draws more demand that increases quite rapidly once the product gains acceptance after its launch. Most of the companies acknowledge the concept of the product life cycle and the fact that all the products that they deal with have a limited lifespan. Accordingly, these companies make regular investments to either develop a new product or extend the life cycle of an existing product, which would ensure that their businesses continue to grow.

What is the introduction stage?

In the introduction stage, a new product is being launched into the market. During this stage, the company focuses on building more and more product awareness in order to develop a market for their product. The strategies employed during the introduction stage are:

What is the final stage of a product's life cycle?

At some point in time, the sale of a product is bound to decline. This point is termed as the decline or the final stage of the product’s life cycle. Most products eventually pass from maturity to a fourth stage of the life-cycle: decline and eventual elimination.

What is the life cycle of a product category?

The life cycle of a product category is found to be longer. Electronic items, for example, will stay in the growth or mature stage for an indefinite period. We also find that some of the product categories have entered into the decline stage, such as VCP, while others are clearly in the growth stage, such as computers.

Why is profit zero?

Profit is zero or negative in this stage because of the heavy expenses of product introduction. With proper marketing, a product can go into the growth stage. During the growth stage, sales rise rapidly as consumers begin to accept the product.

What are the elements of a marketing mix?

You know that the basic marketing mix elements are: product, price, promotion, and distribution.

How does a marketing executive expand a product line?

To compete in this type of market environment effectively, the marketing executive will expand the product line by making a variety of models and styles to broaden the product’s appeal, producing something for everybody in hopes of sustaining sales.

Why is the life cycle important?

When used properly as a guide, the product life-cycle helps the marketing executive understand buyers of the product over time and create appropriate, effective marketing programs.

Why are some brands withdrawn from the market?

The life cycles of brands vary. Some brands are withdrawn from the market shortly after their introduction because customers do not favor them. They have a very short life cycle. Again, there are other brands found to be inexistent in the marketplace for decades, such as Lux. These brands have long life cycles.

What are the elements of marketing strategy?

Here, strategy basically involves four elements – product, price, promotion, and distribution. By appropriate combination of these four elements, ...

How many stages does a product go through?

Product passes through four stages of its life cycle. Every stage poses different opportunities and challenges to the marketer. Each of stages demands the unique or distinguished set of marketing strategies. A marketer should watch on its sales and market situations to identify the stage in which the product is passing through, and accordingly, ...

What is the purpose of high price and low promotion?

This strategy involves launching a product at a high price and low promotion. The purpose of high price is to recover as much as gross profit as possible. And, low promotion keeps marketing expenses low. This combination enables to skim the maximum profit from the market.

What is the purpose of high price?

The purpose of high price is to recover profit per unit as much as possible. The high promotional expenses are aimed at convincing the market the product merits even at a high price. High promotion accelerates the rate of market penetration, in all; the strategy is preferred to skim the cream (high profits) from market.

How can sales volume be increased?

So, sales can be increased either by increasing the number of users or by increasing the usage rate per user or by both. Number of users can be increased by variety of ways.

What is low price promotion?

The strategy consists of introducing a product with low price and low-level promotion. Low price will encourage product acceptance, and low promotion can help realization of more profits, even at a low price.

How to manage decline stage?

The first important task is to detect the poor products. After detecting the poor products, a company should decide whether poor products should be dropped. Some companies formulate a special committee for the task known as Product Review Committee. The committee collects data from internal and external sources and evaluates products. On the basis the report submitted by the committee, suitable decisions are taken.

What is the maturity stage of a product life cycle?

The maturity stage of the product life cycle occurs when the market becomes saturated. At this point, production costs are further reduced through economies of scale and experience, but competition leads to a significant reduction in profits throughout the industry.

What is marketing strategy?

A marketing strategy needs to not only make consumers aware of the product, but also convince them that it fulfills a need for them. Revenues are typically low or negative during this stage, so firms need to be prepared to spend money on their marketing strategy now for future gains.

What is the life cycle of a product?

Life is a series of developments and changes, resulting in peaks, decline and eventually, demise. This is the case not only for living beings, but also for consumer products. Products go through four distinct stages in the life cycle, each with its own unique marketing strategies. Managers should understand each of these stages and how strategies can be best used within each stage, to maximize company profits.

What happens to sales during the decline stage?

At the decline stage, sales either decrease or stabilize. If demand decreases, this will, typically, result in significantly lower price margins, often making it impossible to make profits from the product. At this point, firms that cannot make profits will usually discontinue their product and focus their efforts on other offerings. Firms that can produce the product at a profit will normally market them as a commodity, spending little on marketing and pulling in small profits on slight margins.

What is the introduction stage?

Introduction Stage. During the introduction stage, a product is new and unknown to consumers. It is necessary, therefore, to use an active strategy in an attempt to win over new customers. Although there is usually little competition during this stage, the market is not fully developed. A marketing strategy needs to not only make consumers aware ...

What is the maturity stage of a product?

At maturity stage, brand awareness is strong so sale continues to grow but at a declining rate as compared to past. At this stage, there are more competitors with the same products. So, companies defend the market share and extending product life cycle, rather than making the profits, By offering sales promotions to encourage retailer to give more shelf space to the product than that of competitors. At this stage usually loyal customers make purchases.

Why is it important to understand the life cycle of a product?

An understanding of the cycle is helpful to the managers for a rational understanding of the future sales activities as also planning of marketing strategies.

Why are product life cycles shorter?

Modern product life cycles are becoming shorter and shorter as products in mature stages are being renewed by market segmentation and product differentiation. Companies always attempt to maximize the profit and revenues over the entire life cycle of a product.

Why is the life cycle of a product so short?

There are several reasons why the life-cycle of a product tends to be short : (a) continuous research for product development, (b) simultaneous attempts by several companies in the same direction, and (c) tendency of a new idea to attract competitors. Improvements offered by one company are likely to be met and, if possible, exceeded by competitors in a relatively short period. If a competitor hits upon a real improvement (perhaps based on an entirely new technology) and he markets it well, both sales and profits of the original technology) and he markets it well, both sales and profits of the original product innovator may decline drastically.

What is product life cycle?

Product life-cycle concentrates only the life-cycle of a product beginning with its introduction into the market to the post-marketing phase. However, a series of processes are to be undertaken by the management even prior to the introduction of a product in the market.

Do industrial goods have a longer life?

Every product has its life. Industrial goods may have a longer life than consumer goods. When a product idea is commercialised, the product enters into the market and competes with the rivals, for making sales and earning profits. Products, like human beings, have length of life. This has been described as life-cycle in human beings ...

What are the stages of the product life cycle?

The life cycle has four stages – introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

Why is product life cycle analysis important?

The life cycle analysis of a product helps you determine what the next steps are in its journey. The final decline stage of the product life cycle might lead to retirement or product upgrade. That is why the product life cycle analysis is so critical. These may include both financial and non-financial factors.

What is life cycle analysis?

Products, like people, move through life cycles. The product type or a variant of interest should correspond to a defined market need. Life cycle analysis can also focus on a market segment within a product market. Sales began when the product is introduced and increased over time.

Is the product life cycle shorter?

The length of product life cycles is becoming shorter for many products. Microbrands are popping up every day like Casper Mattresses and Kylie Cosmetics, have become overnight successes. There are, of course, the wide variations in the length of the product life cycle stages for particular products.

What are the stages of a product life cycle?

There are five distinct product life cycle stages: 1 Product Development. When the company finds and develops a new product idea, product development starts. During product development, sales are zero, and the company’s investment costs increase. 2 Introduction. Sales slowly grow as the product is introduced in the market. Profits are still non-existent, because the heavy expenses of the product introduction overweigh sales. 3 Growth. The growth stage is a period of rapid market acceptance and increasing profits. 4 Maturity. In the maturity stage, sales growth slows down because the product has achieved acceptance by most potential buyers. Profits level off or decline because marketing outlays need to be increased to defend the product against competition. 5 Decline. Finally, sales fall off and profits drop.

What is the growth stage of a product?

Growth. The growth stage is a period of rapid market acceptance and increasing profit s. Maturity.

Why does sales growth slow down in the maturity stage?

In the maturity stage, sales growth slows down because the product has achieved acceptance by most potential buyers. Profits level off or decline because marketing outlays need to be increased to defend the product against competition. Decline. Finally, sales fall off and profits drop. Product Life Cycle Stages.

What is a style?

A style is a basic and distinctive mode of expression. For instance, styles appear in homes (e.g. country cottage, functional art deco), clothing (e.g. formal and casual) and art (e.g. realist, surrealist and abstract). A style may last for generations, but usually passes in and out of vogue. Therefore, a style’s product life cycle stages show ...

What is a fashion?

A fashion is a currently popular or accepted style in a certain field. For instance, the more formal ‘business attire’ look in the 1980’s gave way to the ‘business casual’ look of the 2000’s. Fashions tend to grow slowly and remain popular for a while, before declining slowly.

What is a fad in marketing?

Fads are temporary periods of unusually high sales driven by consumer enthusiasm and immediate product or brand popularity. A fad may be part of an otherwise normal product life cycle, passing through the product life cycle stages. But at a certain point, sales raise unexpectedly, but drop afterwards equally quickly.

What is the PLC concept?

The idea behind the PLC concept is that companies must continually innovate. Regardless of the success of a company’s current product line-up, it must skilfully manage the product life cycles of existing products for future success.

What is the maturity stage of a product?

Maturity Stage: The maturity stage of the product life cycle shows that sales will eventually peak and then slow down. During this stage, sales growth has started to slow down, and the product has already reached widespread acceptance in the market, in relative terms. Ultimately, during this stage, sales will peak.

What is product life cycle?

The product life cycle (PLC) describes the life of a product in the market with respect to business/commercial costs and sales measures. It proceeds through multiple phases, involves many professional disciplines and requires a multitude of skills, tools and processes.

Is immediate profit a pressure?

The need for immediate profit is not a pressure. The product is promoted to create awareness and develop a market for the product. The impact on the marketing mix and strategy is as follows:

What is the market introduction stage?

In the market introduction stage (following product development ), the product is released on to the market. Sales are low and costs are high in the market introduction stage, thus, no profits are made. There is little to no competition and demand must be created through heavy promotion.

Is Facebook in the maturity stage?

No new or obsoleting technology is expected to appear soon which would put Facebook out of business. While Facebook competes with other social media sites like Google+ and Twitter, it appears to be holding its own. Thus, we can say that Facebook is comfortably in the maturity stage.

What is the low growth rate of sales?

This stage is characterized by a low growth rate of sales as the product is newly launched and consumers may not know much about it. Traditionally, a company usually incurs losses rather than profits during this phase. Especially if the product is new on the market, users may not be aware of its true potential, necessitating widespread information and advertising campaigns through various media.

What happens during the growth stage of a product?

During the growth stage, the public becomes more aware of the product; as sales and revenues start to increase, profits begin to accrue. Learning Objectives. Identify the conditions that exist when a product is in stage 2, growth of the Product Life Cycle. Key Takeaways.