6/23/2023 0 Comments Skim over defineDecline can also be caused by new innovations that supersede your existing product, such as horse-drawn carriages going out of fashion as the automobile took over. Market DeclineĮventually, as competition continues to rise, with other companies seeking to emulate your success with additional product features or lower prices, so the life cycle will go into decline. Retailers will not seek to promote your product as they may have done in stage one, but will instead become stockists and order takers. Many consumers will now have bought the product and competitors will be established, meaning that branding, price and product differentiation becomes even more important to maintain a market share. As the product life cycle reaches this mature stage there are the beginnings of market saturation. Market MaturityĪt this point a product is established in the marketplace and so the cost of producing and marketing the existing product will decline. At this point the life cycle moves to stage three market maturity. Product pricing and availability in the marketplace become important factors to continue driving sales in the face of increasing competition. Branding becomes important to maintain your position in the marketplace as the consumer is given a choice to go elsewhere. At this point competitors may enter the market with their own versions of your product – either direct copies or with some improvements. The steady growth of the market introduction and development stage now turns into a sharp upturn as the product takes off. This should see growing demand promote an increase in production and the product becoming more widely available. If a product successfully navigates through the market introduction it is ready to enter the growth stage of the life cycle. For this reason, many companies prefer to follow in the footsteps of an innovative pioneer, improving an existing product and releasing their own version. A new product development that is suited to customer needs is more likely to succeed, but there is plenty of evidence that products can fail at this point, meaning that stage two is never reached. This stage can take time to move through, depending on the complexity of the product, how new and innovative it is, how it suits customer needs and whether there is any competition in the marketplace. This product life cycle stage involves developing a market strategy, usually through an investment in advertising and marketing to make consumers aware of the product and its benefits.Īt this stage, sales tend to be slow as demand is created. There are four stages of a product’s life cycle, as follows: 1. Because of this, many businesses avoid genuine innovation in favour of waiting for someone else to develop a successful product before cloning it. These failures are particularly costly as they come after investment has already been made in research, development and production. Writing in the Harvard Business Review in 1965, marketing professor Theodore Levitt declared that the innovator had the most to lose as many new products fail at the introductory stage of the product life cycle. Managing the four stages of the life cycle can help increase profitability and maximise returns, while a failure to do so could see a product fail to meet its potential and reduce its shelf life. As the product moves from maturity to decline, so demand wanes and the product can be removed from the market, possibly to be replaced by a newer alternative. As the new product becomes established, the marketing efforts lessen and the associated costs of marketing and production drop. Successfully introducing a product to the market should see a rise in demand and popularity, pushing older products from the market. The various stages of a product’s life cycle determine how it is marketed to consumers. It is at this point that the product life cycle begins. Once a product is found to be feasible and potentially profitable it can be produced, promoted and sent out to the market. National Structural Integrity Research CentreĪs mentioned above, there are four stages in a product’s life cycle - introduction, growth, maturity, and decline – but before this a product needs to go through design, research and development.Structural Integrity Research Foundation.
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