Product Life Cycle

Product Life Cycle Products play an essential part in our lives. Products are divided by their tangible and intangible attributes which is offered by the wholesaler to end consumers (Business dictionary). Throughout our lives, products play a key role in satisfying not only the needs and but also the desires of consumers. Today, we are living in a world that has a wide variety of products ranging from the basic needs of life such as food, clothes and household appliances to luxury items such as Smartphone and tablets. The existence of products is not only to satisfy the needs and desires but also to satisfy the demands of consumers or customers. Products have a huge role to play in generating profit for any business-oriented organization. This is because a product greatly contributes to the revenue of the business organization. In addition, a product also helps create long term relationships between an organization and its customers because once the customers are genuinely satisfied with the product, they may be loyal to that particular brand of the product and continue to patronize it again in the future. Just like a human being, every product on the market has to go through a life cycle and the length of each product’s life cycle is different from one another (Kerin, Hartley & Rudelius, 2009) .For instance, consumer products such as facial cleansers have shorter life cycles compared to business products like fax and copy machines. The period of time a product remains competitive in the market illustrates the product life cycle. The product life cycle (PLC) is one of the most familiar concepts in marketing and is defined as a concept that provides a way to trace the stages of a product’s acceptance in the market from the introduction of the product to the declination of the product. A product progresses through four major stages which are introduction, growth, maturity and decline (Lamb, Hair, McDaniel, Summers & Gardiner, 2009). The first stage of

References: Kerin, R.A., Hartley, S.W., & Rudelius, W. (2009). Marketing:The Core. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Bengu, H., & Kara, E. (2010). Product life cycle costing methodology. Banking and Finance Letters , 2(3), 325-333. Hambrick, D., Macmillan, I., & Diana, D. (1982). Strategic attributes and performance in the BCG matrix Harrell, G. D., & Frazier, G.L. (1999). Marketing:connecting with customer. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Hofer, C. (1975). Toward a contingency theory of business strategy. Academy of Management Journal , 785-810. Keen, M. (2012). Managing the supply chain contribution at various points along the Product Life Cycle Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (2012). Principles of marketing. United States: Pearson Education. Kurtzleben, D. (2012). U.S News & World Report. Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/09/12/new-iphone-thinner-lighter-but-faces-same-tough-competition. Marcu, M., & Gherman, C. (2010). The efficiency of promotional instruments related to the product life cycle stages McCarthy, Perreault, & Quester. (1998). Basic marketing:a managerial approach. Australia: McGraw Hill. Mohan, A. V., & Krishnaswamy, K. (2006). Marketing programmes across different phase of the product life cycle Pessemier, E. (1997). Product life cycle. USA: John Wiley & Son Inc. Sanford, G. (2012). Order Chili 's Online. Retrieved from http://apple- history.com/iphone. Lamb, C.W., Hair, J.F., McDaniel, C., Summers, J., & Gardiner, M. (2009). MKTG. Sydney: Cengage Learning Australia Pty Limited.