Blog 6: Products Have A Life Cycle Too

Hey everybody!

Did you know that products follow a life cycle just like humans do? Products go through four stages in what is called the Product Life Cycle. These four stages are introduction, growth, maturity and decline.

The Introduction Stage is when a product gets introduced into its target market. During this period, the products sales are low but growing slowly. Product does now have much profit because the company usually invests a lot of money in product development. Companies want to raise consumer awareness for their product so they often will spend a lot of money on advertising. Sometimes consumers are also given the ability to try out a product before buying it. My textbook talks about how Gillette spent millions of dollars to develop the Fusion razor and then they went on to spend about $200 million in advertising. Within a few month over 60% of male shavers were aware of the new razor and about 26% of them tried out the product.

A lot of the money spent in the introduction stage is made to simulate two types of demands which are primary and secondary. Primary demand is when a consumer wants to buy a certain product class instead of a specific brand while secondary demand is the preference for a specific brand.

During the Growth Stage, the product has a rapid increase in sales and other competitors become present. Profit usually peaks during this stage because of the increase in competitors and the fact that the products are priced in a competitive manner. Advertising usually focuses on the products benefits and then compares itself to the competitors. This means that they are targeting consumers that already have purchased the product in the past as well as reaching out to new people. Companies wants to show how they are different and also show some new or improved features that they have added since the original design went on sale. You could say that tablets are a good example of being in the growth stage because originally most consumers only knew about the iPad but as time went on new competitors like Samsung or Microsoft have come out with their own tablets. Each company tries to show how their product is different from everyone else's while also developing new features for their own tablet.

You tend to see competitors leave the market and a decline the industries sales during the Maturity Stage. The consumers that buy these products tend to be brand loyal and repeat customers. There are fewer new consumers that enter the market so the sales begin to slightly decrease. Companies profit will also decline because of the competitive prices among competitors and it cost more money to reach new consumers. When marketing during the maturity stage, companies try to hold on to their market share through promotion of product differentiation and finding new buyers. My textbook uses soft drinks as an example of being in the maturity stage. This is because most of the consumers of soft drinks are brand loyal and will keep going back to the same product over time. As time has gone on, some smaller soft drink companies have gone out of business while companies like Pepsi and Coke have been strong competitors for years.

During the Decline Stage you will see the sales drop. Products often enter this stage because the environment around it has change and not because the company did anything wrong. The two strategies for handling product decline are deletion and harvesting. Deletion is when a company removes the product from the company's product line. This is considered a drastic approach because consumers still use the product even though it is the decline stage. Harvesting is when a company keeps the product and just reduces marketing costs. Sales people will continue to sell the product but they will not spend a lot of time or money marketing or selling the product. I thought that 35 mm film fits this stage very well because some photographers still use film to take pictures even though we are in a digital world. Camera companies still sell film even though they mainly focus products for digital cameras.

I hope you all enjoyed this weeks blog!

See you soon!
Chris

Works Cited

Film. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2015. 

Gillette Fusion. Helloadoorable, 22 Mar. 2006. Web. 22 Mar. 2015. 

Kerin, Roger A., Steven W. Hartley, and William Rudelius. Marketing. 11th ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2013. Print. 

Product Life Cycle. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2015. 

Soft Drinks. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2015. 

Tablets. Digital image. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.