Literature Review of Product Life Cycle

Since the early 1950s the concept of product lifecycle was adopted by the marketing
management, even though the markets were of simple segmentations and with comparatively
unsophisticated communications (Wood, 1990). Besides, the perception of product lifecycle
has been considered as the most relevant type of factor for marketing strategy for many years
now. Usually a company that relies on limited number of products or customers would
possibly be prone to greater risks of attaining a death phase of the product life cycle early; in
view of the fact that, product might fail or the customer goes for a better option available in
time (Walton, 2007). However, according to Lynch (2006) operating with more than one
product is strategically viable as it would automatically be serving many types of customers
in the market.
Moreover, the product lifecycle goes through a series of stages that account for the business
lows and highs. Normally, when a product is trekking along these stages, additional
investments, increasing the levels of attractiveness and increase in assets helps the product to
continue its growth. However, these stages are very well classified over time into five
categories broadly, which are:
(1) Introduction of the product: A new product needs substantial marketing skills along
with engineering back up to bring it commercially into the market. This happens only
when the product falls into the needs of customers in a specified market. In the words
of Robert Cooper (1976) as reported in the context of launching a thriving new
product that the marketing research personnel and activities are important to strive
and escape an industrial product failure. However, these both fall into the later stages
of product lifecycle (Mohan and Krishnaswamy, 2006).
(2) Growth: In this stage characteristically the sales and usage levels of the product
increase and usually the competitors begin to rise as well. On the other hand, the
marketing efforts are normally directed towards adequate distribution and sufficing
the market (Cunningham, 1974). However, the characteristic features that normally
concentrated upon in view of future prosperity of the company are: Brand
establishing, expansion of distribution, product differentiation (Hambrick et al.,
1982).
(3) Maturity: Usually observation of the phase can be the decrease in the cost of product
or a decrease in the level of usage. Maintenance of the market shares, sales and
simultaneously searching for different market area penetration methods play a vital
role in surviving this stage. However, they can be achieved by various marketing
strategies as reported; such as, extensive advertising, Distribution price reducing
(Hofer, 1975), improvisation of product line (Hambrick et al., 1982), Segmentation of
the market (Smallwood, 1985).

(4) Decline and withdrawal: the trend of the market falls down rapidly as shown clearly
in the graph (figure 1). Moreover, this phase shows the characteristic nature of
production of various products being reduced.

Figure 1: the trend of the product life cycle over the broadly classified five stages (Walton, 2007)

Furthermore, a detailed literature survey have revealed many research studies point out the
fact that implementation of different marketing programs along the product life cycle is the
best approach to product life in the market (Frohman, 1985; Mohan and Krishnaswamy,
2006).
CD-ROM services in libraries: According to Walton (2007), seldom products or services
actually track such a pre defined cycle and most of the time they tend not to go some of the
stages; for instance, a map of a certain product might be go straight from first phase to the
decline and withdrawal phases. However, the mapping of improvement of libraries towards
the CD-ROM mediated services against various phases of product life cycle is contented as
quite possible in the report. In spite of all the speculations, such a product lifecycle would be
helpful to understand evolution and development of library services.
The Marketing activity usually comprises of commotions like feedback of information to the
research and engineering departments concerning the performance of the product. On the
other hand, research and development of marketing also includes customer surveys about the
product and marketing mix variables. The LCC (life cycle cost) is one such factor that is
estimated and it is closely integrated product life cycle in order to work out the marketing
strategies. The LCC (life cycle cost) of a particular item defined as the collective sum of all
the investments on it, starting from its origin to its manufacture and along its product life
cycle, towards the decline of its useful life (Korpi and Ala-Risku, 2008).
The product life cycle, is one of the most criticized for comprehensive inspection of its
concept validity among its counterparts (Polli and Cook, 1969). It was also argued that the
product lifecycle concept is effective in performance and was also postulated that its
conceptual practice would in fact hamper the thinking of market management (Wood, 1990).
2

On the other hand a lot of factors influence the product life cycle; such as, innovation, cost,
advancements in technology, customer needs and shifts in the economic circumstances.
However, it is the importance of these variables that were actually raised by the critics on the
concept, which has carried over towards speculate the efficiency of the product life cycle
concept to form strategies and being used as a tool for formulating marketing programs.

REFERENCE
Hofer, C.W. (1975). Toward a contingency theory of business strategy. Academy of
Management Journal. 18 (4): 785-810.

Hambrick, D.C.,Macmillan, I.C. and Diana, D.L. (1982). Strategic attributes and performance
in the BCG matrix a PIMS based analysis of industrial product business. Academy of
Management Journal. 25(3): 510-31.
Korpi, E. and Ala-Risku, T. (2008). Life Cycle Costing: A Review of Published Case Studies,
Managerial Auditing Journal. 23(3): 240-261.
Karakaya, F. and Kerin, R. (2007). Impact of product life cycle stages on barriers to entry.
Journal of Strategic Marketing. 15(4): 269-80.
Mohan, A and Krishnaswamy, K.N. (2006). Marketing programmes across different phases of
the product life cycle. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics. 18(4): 354-373.
Polli, R. and Cook, V. (1969). Validity of the product life cycle. Journal of Business. 42 (4):
385-400.
Smallwood, J.E. (1985). The product life cycle: a key to marketing planning. in Enis, B.M.
and Cox, K.K. (Eds), Marketing Classics A Selection of Influential Articles, Allyn and
Bacon, Inc., Boston.
Walton, G. (2007). Theory, research and practice in library management 2: the balanced
product portfolio. Library Management. 28: 262268.
Wood, L. (1990). The end of the product life cycle? Education says goodbye to an old friend.
Journal of Marketing Management. 6 (2): 145-55.