All products are subject to a life cycle -- they're introduced as innovative and new and

eventually become obsolete. Life cycle management applies to marketers, engineers,

researchers and managers, because it prescribes different behavior depending on where a
product is in its life cycle. The paradigm has implications for businesses and consumers
alike, and product life cycles offer advantages and disadvantages for both parties.

Understanding Marketing and Development

From a marketing and business development perspective, one of the strongest advantages
of product life cycles is that they enable a comprehensive understanding of where the
products and brands in a company's portfolio currently sit. For example, if a piece of
software is reaching the late growth stage of its life cycle, the company recognizes that
increasing competition will naturally lead to decreasing profits. This means that marketers
currently working on the product can be moved to other tasks, and the engineering staff can
be reduced to a maintenance level, with other engineers moved to research and
development for newer, more profitable products.

Low Applicability in Certain Markets

A disadvantage of the life cycle paradigm is that it's not applicable in all product categories.
For instance, established food and drink brands sustain revenues from products that have
been in the maturity stage of their life cycles for many years now, but experiments with these
core products may provoke consumer backlash rather than increased consumption. In the
pharmaceutical industry, many drugs work as well now as they did 20 years ago. However,
trademark expiration and the corresponding uptick in consumption of generics force an
artificial life cycle on products, with the industry developing its strategies based on
profitability rather than efficacy.

Innovation, Safety and Security

For consumers, the product life cycle has generally positive implications by driving
innovation, which leads to products that are more effective and safer -- cleaning products do
their jobs better, cameras take better pictures, computers are faster and so on. In computer
software, product life cycles also increase security -- unsupported products that are past the
end of their life cycles are more vulnerable to viruses or other computer maladies. By
keeping consumers focused on software in the early or developing stages of their life cycle,
companies can keep their engineers focused on maximizing the security of a small range of
products.

Planned Obsolescence
The flip side of innovation, however, is a phenomenon known as "planned obsolescence."
Because life cycle management effectively demands that products be replaced by new ones,
companies build in the terminal stages of the life cycle artificially. For example, a widget
manufacturer may introduce a product for the new model year whose plugs are incompatible
with the previous year's widgets, or a software company may explicitly decide to stop
supporting a product just because it's old. This leads to waste, as consumers are forced to
upgrade, discarding products that in all other regards may have worked just fine.
Benefits and limitations of Product life
cycle
By Hitesh Bhasin December 2, 2016
Benefits Of The Product life cycle Model Managers are always in need of predictive tools to
help them navigate a seemingly chaotic market, and the Product life cycle model gives managers
the ability to forecast product directions on a macro level, and plan for timely execution of
relevant competitive moves. Coupled with actual sales data, the Product life cycle model can also
be used as an explanatory tool in facilitating an understanding of past and future sales
progression.

The Product life cycle model aids in making sense of past events as part of any extrapolatory and
interpretive approach to building strategy. Once a product strategy or product line strategy has
been formulated, the Product life cycle model can be used as part of an ongoing strategy
validation process since it reflects on market trends, customer issues and technological
advancement. Companies always anticipate the emergence of new competitors and therefore,
must prepare in advance to battle the competition and strengthen their products position.

The PLC model is advantages in planning long-term offensive marketing strategies, particularly
when markets and economies are stable. Nevertheless, most products die and once products are
dead they hold no substantial revenue potential and are a toll on a companys resources. By
combining the elements of time, sales volume and notion of evolutionary stages, the Product life
cycle model helps determine when reasonable to eliminate dead products.

Limitations Of The Product life cycle Model It is difficult to foresee transitions in Product
life cycle stages since the key indicator are sales, which are always calculated with some lag.
Therefore, the realization a stage transition has occurred is nearly always in retrospect. In
addition, fluctuations in sales will produce erroneous conclusions, so slowing sales do not
necessary mean the product has reached the Decline phase and the resulting conclusion to retire
the product and divert resources is wrong.

Products, companies and markets are different, so not all products or services go through every
stage of the Product life cycle. There have been many cases where products have gone straight
from introduction to decline, usually because of bad marketing, misconceived features, lack of
value to the consumer or simply a lack of need for such a product.

However, even if products would go through every stage of the Product life cycle, not all
products/services spend the same length of time at each stage. This adds another level of
complexity in determining which Product life cycle stage the product is in and consequently,
which strategy to apply.

REFERENCE THIS

Published: 23rd March, 2015

Disclaimer: This essay has been submitted by a student. This is not an example of the work written by our
professional essay writers.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect the views of UK Essays.

Introduction:
Marketing is a process which is based on communication and whereby individuals obtain what they need
through others creating or exchanging products and value with them. For companies to sell their products,
marketing is the most important factor to reach out to customers as Kotler & Armstrong, (2008) define. This
essay presents the product life cycle and focuses on its strength and weakness points.

The concept of Product Life Cycle (PLC):

Product life cycle (PLC): is an idea from cradle to grave and considered sales record of a product time.
PLC has four hypotheses: 1. a limitation life of products, 2. each phase has its own different features such
as: methods of sales, 3. profits variation throughout the life cycle, 4. strategic methods used at each stage
differ (Bennett, 1995 & Thetimes100, 2009).

The Stages of PLC:

PLC has five stages 1. Development (pre-Launch), 2. Launch (Introduction), 3.Growth, 4.Maturity
(Saturation), 5.Decline (Thetimes100, 2009).

The development phase:

In this stage, a firm has an idea and tries to make improvements to it, which is done by employing the
researching skills for that purpose. This usually costs a lot of money in designing, production, advance
promotion and if there were no sales, there would be no profit (Mark, 1998).

The introduction phase:

If the product agreed on, which a firm has decided to launch was its own innovative, unique one, normally,
in this case, chances are less that any difficulty get in the way, especially and mainly from competitors. It
remains at the beginning of this stage from the 4 Ps' mentioned previously: promotion and place. A firm
needs to create awareness, encourage sales, advertisement, public relations, and most importantly
develop an image (Mark, 1998 & Netmba, 2009).
The growth phase:
When a product achieves success, competitors will have reaction that entering market as quickly as
possible. As a result promotional cost would increase in this stage for the sake of persuading consumers
that the product of ours is better than other competitors (Mark, 1998 & Netmba, 2009).

The maturity phase:

Competitors are rising sharply in the market and there is no space in for new copartners. Firm at this stage
will exert all promotion options to preserve its brand loyalty within its own customers. However, at this stage
sales and price begin fall down in the same time there are a large several of versions of product. By using
different approaches competitors will detach part of market from the firm (Blythe, 2009).

The decline phase:

This is the stage leading towards the end. In other words, it is the stage where the death of the product
begins to take place. There are a small number of balance sheet promotion sections which could manage it
with. As much as the firm can keep its product on the life, it will still be able to earn some money. However,
in this stage, varieties of versions are not available and the price might need to be raised (Blythe, 2009). In
fact, most decision to eliminate products is made on the basis of intuition and judgment rather than any
formal analysis (Blythe, 2009.pp:81-82).

Strengths of the PLC.

When used alongside analysis of sales figures and forecasts, PLC can be a powerful tool in providing
guidance and marketing tactics that are appropriate at a particular stage (suite101, 2009).

What are the keys of succeeding?

Clearly, to allow a product to succeed and penetrate the market, it has to fulfill the needs of a sizable
number of customers. With new products, this usually occurs automatically when the product possesses
some new features which cannot be found in other existing products. Improvement in operation and
technology is another cause of success (Dibb et al., 2006).

Weakness of PLC.
Even with using the PLC diagrams, there is no way to predict the length of each phase that the product is
going to stagnate at. Furthermore, neither can it be used in forecasting accurately. These are the main
failures and weakness points of the PLC model (Know this, 2004 & mind tools, 2009).

What is the fatal mistake which marketers do? Why do some

products fail?
The critical major mistake that marketers may neglect is when the product they introduce to the market
does not meet the needs of the customer. This occurs for any of the following reasons: 1. the product does
not offer value and therefore fails to progress in the marketplace. 2. The branding is ineffective or not well
known. 3. Sometimes, the mistakecan be within the design. 4. In some other cases, technical problems
appear. Moreover, Distribution and overestimation of the market size problems are considered a huge
mistake which marketers can possibly commit (Dibb et al., 2006).

What are the internal and external factors have effects on

PLC?
There are many features which effect PLC and the vital of them Product decisions and Consumer behavior.

Product decisions (Internal factor):

Product decisions include those intended to have an effect upon the firm primarily, then product, its sales,
and, hence, its lifecycle and not related directly to the consumers. This is so clear in the example of Coca-
Cola case below.

Consumer behaviour (External factor):

Decision making process elements are considered many three issues: First: Personal characteristics:
personality, lifestyle, motivation, beliefs, attitudes, and perception. Second:Circumstances of the buyer:
gender, age, family, life-cycle, income, and education level. Third: Social environment: culture, reference
groups, and social class (Hill & O'Sullivan, 1999). These are out-of-control factors that a firm has no hand
on. They affect the life cycle of a product and given the name, external factors. In fact, this is not precisely
the case. Because this is mainly more related to the customer buying that very product, a fair look at
psychology can be devoted here to face any of the problems caused by any of the above factors. If looked
more closely at the nature of this situation, one finds that it is concerned with decision-making process area
of psychology. As soon as a consumer makes the decision to buy that product, which is what marketers
look forward to, the business will begin and the product introduced will continue going through the stages to
live its cycle. The external factor effect should be clear in the Kellogg's example later (Hill, & O'Sullivan,
1999).

Coca-Cola case study

In this case study, it will be shown clearly that some of the products don't even reach the growth or the
maturity stages but straightforward towards the declining stage. This was when Coca-Cola thought to
launch its own bottles of water in 1993. Dasani, was the marketing name of the product. In the UK, what
happened was that the factory had contaminated the bottles with what a cancer-causing chemical called
bromated. This is different from the chemical substance bromide. The factory was using the tap water
which comes normally from the Thames River. Then, this is being purified using the reverse Osmosis
method of purification. After, this purified water is added to a batch of Calcium Chloride (CaCl2) and
bromide. When Ozone gas is pumped into that batch, the bromide will be oxidized to bromated. This
was mainly the reason for Coca-Cola to divest this kind of a product. Apparently, for this reason, the water
of Thames River is being monitored to check the existence, or the concentration for that matter, is below
the 10 micrograms per litre. This clearly shows how the internal factor effect here led to the end of the
product (Dibb et al., 2006).

Kellogg's Nutri-Grain Case study:

In 1997, Kellogg's has achieved successes for approximately fifty per cent, which was part of the growing a
puffed rice of market Perform in short time less than three years. Until 2002, sales continued growing and
increasing within new improvements of flavour and ingredient to the original product. Nutri-Grain, as an
example, grew gradually to be identified and recognised by the customers themselves. Nutri-Grain has
changed customers' understanding from missing breakfast to become a health daily snack.
All Bran bars and Alpen bars are the main competitors of Nutri-Grain yet the interesting issue about the two
is that both are from Kellogg's itself. However, there are others producing similar products to Nutri-Grain
which slightly caused cutting of total profits. Each product of Kellogg's itself has a life cycle, some of which
spend months within one stage and others, such as: Nutri-Grain spent years in only the growth stage.
In the middle of 2004, Kellogg's noticed that Nutri-Grain sales started falling and losing its position.
Meanwhile, the rate of market reached 15% of growing. It is obvious that Kellogg's should choose one of
two decisions, either to withdraw Nutri-Grain or add some improvements to it to return it back to life
(Thetimes100, 2009).

Evaluation
Simply, an analogy to the PLC is the life of a being. The living being starts developing from the moment it is
born. Next step comes the stage of growth when it becomes a youth through towards maturity when it
becomes adult. Finally, it dies which is similar to the withdrawal of a product from the market but before that
it gets old; its sales show a decline. Having stated that, it shall be clear as to why be it that not all the
products come through the lifecycle phases in the same pattern!
As figure number 1 shows: The above plot shows the general typical life cycle that virtually every product
should go through if no obstacles were on the way but the pattern differs. As expected in the research and
development stage, the sales are zero since the product is not introduced to the market yet. Then, once it
is introduced, the sales will begin and this is shown on the graph as sudden rise forming a curvature
upwards shape. The rise continues until the stage of decline is reached and this is represented as a
downward curvature shape indicated that the sales have fallen.
In the development stage, small firms and big firms are not equal in terms of the precautions and the
initiatives they take and so for the new and old companies. New Companies are more vulnerable to suffer
from the consequences that the old ones and the reason for that is that the old have far more experience
than the new firms. Big companies have a strong finical base which allows them to fight in the market with
no fear.
As have been stated above, in the introduction phase section, that the awareness and sales
encouragement and more importantly the advertising is done actively at this stage. Doing the same kind of
comparison between small and big firms, the latter have a variety of products in its production line which, in
turn, adds a huge space for marketing activities such as, making ads about two or more products of their
own, in other words, promotional effect dominates more than in the small firms.
After passing the first two stages and the product reaches the growth stage safely, competitors reaction
did not exist, both of the small and big firms are equal.
However, if their reaction was catalyzed and competition was prevalent, they are not similar in the sense
that the potential of each differs. As result, the course of action of each will be different and each will reap
the harvest of competitors' reaction differently, in accordance to their potential.
Some products, although reach their decline stage, do not believe in what is called the decline phase and
getting old. As a result, they overcome this problem and regain their position and popularity after taking the
necessary strategies. This normally occurs when a little innovative tweak, be it a promotion, or an
additional feature that is applied to the existing product.
To reinforce the point of weakness mentioned earlier about the model that it fails to predict the exact time a
product will spend at a certain stage, a set of examples are presented and exposed to evaluation. One of
the examples is clothing. Cloths cannot be handled, to some extent, somehow to extend its life cycle as it is
down to the fashion of the year. So, normally this kind of product lasts for no longer than a couple of
months up to a year. (Know this, 2004)
On the contrary, products like cars or bells live longer and can be trusted for at least five years or even
more than that. These products' life cycle, unlike the cloths, can be extended
Products in between are prone to societies. A typical example is mobile phones. In some communities,
people consider the mobile phone as fashionable item that is changeable each time a better, newer one is
launched to the market. Others are fulfilled with it as being merely a mean of communication and that it is
hard to do its job.
Internal and external factors are equally as important. It has been seen in the example above how
exceeded legal limit of bromate of a bottle of water has led Coca-Cola's product towards death directly from
the introduction phase; internal phase. Similarly with Nutri-Grain, Realistic snackers interest in healthy food,
and it being the only healthy product have forced Kellog's to revitalize Nutri-Grain, external factor.

Conclusion:
PLC is a brief description or representation of a life cycle of a product in terms of graph. It is one of the
powerful analysis tools in business generally and in marketing specifically. PLC mode can imply the
possible strategies to be pursued in order to extend the life cycle of the product having known the stage at
which the product is at standing.
It can be concluded that in order to overcome this external factor, a marketer needs to play with the
elements of decision-making process.
By the death of the product, a complete description of the whole life of the product will be provided by the
PLC model that can be used later on in the research and development stage of a new product.
Unreliability

On the downside, a product life cycle is not always a reliable indicator of the true lifespan of a product and adhering

to the concept may lead to mistakes. For example, a dip in sales during the growth stage may only be a temporary lull

instead of a sign the product is reaching maturity. If the dip causes a company to reduce its promotional efforts too

quickly, it may limit the product's growth and prevent it from becoming a true success.

False Assumptions

Another possible drawback is that unlike the inevitable life cycle of a human being, the occurrence of a product life

cycle is not a certainty. Changes in market conditions or consumer tastes or the introduction of a similar product by

the competition can render planning based on a predicted product life cycle totally useless. There is no guarantee that

a product will even make it out of the introduction stage, or it may move through the cycle more rapidly or slowly

than anticipated.