PRODUCT LIFE-CYCLE MARKETING STRATEGIES

A company’s positioning and differentiation strategy must change as the product market, and competitors change over time. Here we will describe the concept of the Product Life Cycle (PLC) and the normal changes as the product passes through each life-cycle stage.
To say that a product has a life-cycle is to
assert four things:

1. Products have a limited life.
   
2. Product sales pass through distinct stages, each posing different challenges, opportunities, and problems to the seller.
   
3. Profits rise and fall at different stages of the product life-cycle.
   
4. Products require different marketing, financial, manufacturing, purchasing, and human resource strategies in each life-cycle stage.

Product Life-cycles

Most product life-cycle curves are portrayed as bell-shaped. This curve is typically divided into four stages: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.

Style, Fashion, and Fad Life-cycles

The three special categories of product life cycles should be distinguished – styles, fashions, and fads. A style is a basic and distinctive mode of expression appearing in field of human endeavor. Styles appear in homes (colonial, ranch, Cape Cod); clothing (formal, casual, funky); and art (realistic, surrealistic, abstract). A style can last for generations, and go in and out of vogue. A fashion is a currently accepted or popular style in a given field. Fashion pass through four stages: distinctiveness, emulation, mass-fashion, and decline.