Product Life Cycle Stage

The product life cycle, in a marketing context, is all the stages of a product 's life span that are related to its promotion and sales. The marketing life cycle is traditionally broken down into four stages: introduction, growth, maturity and decline.

Introduction stage

The introduction stage is the stage in which a new product is first distributed and made available for purchase, after having been developed in the product development stage. But introduction can take a lot of time, and sales growth tends to be rather slow. Profits in the introduction stage are negative or low due to the low sales on the one hand and high-distribution and promotion expenses on the other hand. Much money is needed to attract distributors and build their stocks.

Concerning the product life cycle strategies we can identify the proper launch strategy: the company must choose a launch strategy that is consistent with the intended product positioning. Without doubt, this initial strategy can be considered to be the first step in a grander marketing plan for the product’s entire life cycle. The main objective should be to create product awareness and trial. Since the market is normally not ready for product improvements or refinements at this stage, the company produces basic versions of the product. Cost-plus pricing should be used to recover the costs incurred. Selective distribution in the beginning helps to focus efforts on the most important distributors. Advertising should aim at building product awareness among innovators and early adopters. To entice trial, heavy sales promotion is

This will happen at some point, since the market becomes saturated. Generally, the maturity stage lasts longer than the two preceding stages. Consequently, it poses strong challenges to marketing management and needs a careful selection of product life cycle strategies. The slowdown in sales growth is due to many producers with many products to sell. Likewise, this overcapacity results in greater competition. Since competitors start to mark down prices, increase their advertising and sales promotions and increase their product development budgets to find better versions of the product, a drop in profit occurs. Also, some of the weaker competitors drop out, eventually leaving only well-established competitors in the