Product Life Cycle - Essay
Product Life Cycle:
Definition:
Products come and go. A company’s challenge is to hold on to its customers longer than it holds on to its products. It needs to watch the market life cycle and the customer life cycle more than the product life cycle. Someone at Ford realized this: “If we’re not customer driven, our cars won’t be either.”
One selects marketing tools that are appropriate to the stage of the product’s life cycle. For example, advertising and publicity will produce the biggest payoff in the introduction stage of a product; their job is to build consumer awareness and interest. Sales promotions and personal selling grow more important during a product’s maturity stage. Personal selling can strengthen customers’ comprehension of your product’s advantages and their conviction that the offering is worthwhile.
Product Development and Life-Cycle Strategies:
In the face of changing customer needs, technologies and competition, product innovation or the development of new products has become vital to a company's survival. Introducing new products, however, is not sufficient. The firm must also know how to manage the new product as it goes through its life cycle: that is, from its birth, through growth and maturity, to eventual demise as newer products come along that better serve consumer needs.
This product life cycle presents two principal challenges. First, because all products eventually decline, the firm must find new products to replace ageing ones (the problem of new-product development). Second, the firm must understand how its products age and adapt its marketing strategies as products pass through life-cycle stages (the problem of product life-cycle, strategies'). We therefore look initially at the problem of finding and developing new products, and then at the challenge of managing them successfully over their life cycles.
Innovation and New-Product Development:
Given the rapid changes in taste, technology and competition, a
Definition:
Products come and go. A company’s challenge is to hold on to its customers longer than it holds on to its products. It needs to watch the market life cycle and the customer life cycle more than the product life cycle. Someone at Ford realized this: “If we’re not customer driven, our cars won’t be either.”
One selects marketing tools that are appropriate to the stage of the product’s life cycle. For example, advertising and publicity will produce the biggest payoff in the introduction stage of a product; their job is to build consumer awareness and interest. Sales promotions and personal selling grow more important during a product’s maturity stage. Personal selling can strengthen customers’ comprehension of your product’s advantages and their conviction that the offering is worthwhile.
Product Development and Life-Cycle Strategies:
In the face of changing customer needs, technologies and competition, product innovation or the development of new products has become vital to a company's survival. Introducing new products, however, is not sufficient. The firm must also know how to manage the new product as it goes through its life cycle: that is, from its birth, through growth and maturity, to eventual demise as newer products come along that better serve consumer needs.
This product life cycle presents two principal challenges. First, because all products eventually decline, the firm must find new products to replace ageing ones (the problem of new-product development). Second, the firm must understand how its products age and adapt its marketing strategies as products pass through life-cycle stages (the problem of product life-cycle, strategies'). We therefore look initially at the problem of finding and developing new products, and then at the challenge of managing them successfully over their life cycles.
Innovation and New-Product Development:
Given the rapid changes in taste, technology and competition, a