Introduction
Today`s business world recognizes the importance of strategy and strategic management. Normally any strategic process has three distinct stages which are analysis, formulation of plans and implementation, a strategy is significantly influenced by environmental change. In this study the focus is formulating strategy and fit this on the Product life cycle (PLC) phases to advance successfully in market competition.
Managers need to formulate a marketing strategy that generates a competitive advantage and positions the organization`s products effectively. Formulating strategy contain three steps, but this study is limited to one of the steps and pricing strategy in order to see how these strategies are related and now they cooperate with each other and also how to fit them in the phases of a product life cycle.
The product life cycle is an important concept in marketing. Product life cycle is the stages through which a product or its category bypasses. From its introduction to the marketing, growth, maturity to its decline or reduce in demand in the market. Not all products reach this final stage, some continue to grow and some rise and fall. The product life cycle (PLC) describes the life of a product in the market with respect to business/commercial costs and sales measures. It proceeds through multiple phases, involves many professional disciplines and requires a multitude of skills, tools and processes.
This is not to say that product lives cannot be extended - there are many good examples of this - but rather, each product has a 'natural' life through which it is expected to pass
However, rapid rate of technological advance is shortening PLCs (Lee et al., 2006). Meanwhile, the interval between these generations becomes shorter as the competition becomes more intensive (Kim et al., 2005). Faced with abbreviated product longevity, predicting the demand for and diffusion of new products is crucial for purposes of