Question

Select a product you are familiar with. Based on your knowledge of the product life cycle, what types of changes will occur to your selected product as it continues through the product life cycle? How will this affect the marketing of your selected product?

Answer 1

Product life cycle of a product defines the different stages in which a product goes through from its introduction into the market till its retrenchment from the market. There are mainly 4 stages in a product cycle,it involves the following :Introduction Stage, Growth Stage, Maturity Stage, Decline Stage. Let's study in detail through an example of a product say Typewriter: In its initial stages it became popular due to its improved technology that improved easeness and efficiency in writing. By the growth stage, consumers are already taking to the product and increasingly buying it. The product concept is proven and is becoming more popular - and sales are increasing which helped it to grow in a steady with not much competitors. If competition for the product is especially high, the company may still heavily invest in advertising and promotion of the product to beat out competitors. As a result of the product growing, the market itself tends to expand. it reached its Maturity Stage it started facing severe competition from high technology driven devices like computers which lead them to suffer toghter situation as they can't grow any more only they can increase their production or start giving some price deductions. In the last stage, product evantually get depleted from the market. In case of typewriters it had started facing severe competition from computers, laptops and smart phones which started replacing the typewriters with its ease of performance. When companies Microsoft rule the world typewriters are at its tail to get removed from the market.

The marketing of a product at its different stages of its product cycle differ to each other. In its initial stages, there will be huge promotional and marketing activities to make sure that the product reaches to every customer it needed to. It may follow any type of pricing strategy to capture the market. At its growth stage, as it have increased sales as compared to its competitors they do those marketing activities that make the customers to go for that product only while comparing with its competitors. In its Maturity Stage, Marketing at this point is targeted at fending off competition. And finally at its last stage the product will be available for very low price and do marketing activities to make the product exist in the market. And when nothing wins it gradually get depleted from the market forever.