BMW's Product life cycle.

any product has four stages of life cycle: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. However, this concept does not quite fit with BMW's products. Jim McDowell, vice president of marketing at BMW says " If a product is declining, we would prefer to withdraw it from the market, as opposed to having a strategy for dealing with the declining product," In other words, Maturity and Decline stages do not usually exist in BMW's product life cycle. Before a product reaching the Maturity stage that characterized by decreasing sales rate and declining profit, BMW pulls it out from the market. BMW cars typically have product life cycle of seven years. As we see in Figure 11-1 any product has bell-shape curve of duration of life cycle, but BMW cars has half shape life cycle, including introduction and growth stages. Thus, the best sales number is often achieved in sixth or seventh year after product introduction.

BMW car has only two-stage of product life cycle, introduction and growth stages. The X5 series and the 3 series were introduced in 2000 and 2001, respectively. Based on BMW's product life cycle, these two series are both in the Growth stage. BMW introduced three versions for each model of the 3 series. The X5 also has three different versions that satisfied different consumers' preferences. BMW's website provides a great access for its potential customers in addition to the regular dealerships. From its website, customer can easily identify BMW's promotion strategy. It also shows the competitive difference, such as the luxury car, the safest car, and the most drivable car. For BMW 3 series, advertising campaign focuses on the concept of the luxury car under fair price. For BMW X5 series, advertising campaign focuses on the technology for overcoming bad climate and rough road situation and the joy of driving.

As mentioned before, BMW's car has only two life cycles and it requires a special marking and managing strategy. By modifying the product, BMW successfully