Authors: Rolando Polli and Victor Cook
Source: The Journal of Business, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Oct., 1969), pp. 385-400
In this article, Rolando Polli and Victor Cook state that although the product life has been widely discussed, it hasn't been systematically tested as a model of sales behavior. The aim is to develop an operational model of the product life cycle, to determine the statistics for evaluating the model and to show the conclusion of the tests that was done with 140 categories of nondurable consumer products.
Before the testing chapter, the basic product life cycle concept and its components is explained; such as introduction, growth, maturity and decline. It is also mentioned that the product life cycle is effected by the population growth, change in the level of personal consumption and price changes. The ''product'' was defined by distinguishing the term into three segments, product classes, product forms and brands. The product class includes all the objects that serves for the same needs, but have differences in shapes, sizes and technical characteristics. The product forms are finer partitions of a product class, it includes the types of the same product. Such as cigarettes with or without filters. For the last one, brands make the product form unique, not only in package differences. With all these definitions, it is possible to propose a variable model of the product life cycle.
In the test three class of consumer products was used. Health and personal care, foods and cigarettes. the primary goal of the test was to calculate the consistency to the life cycle model with observed sales histories, in the nondurables field. Sales numbers of more than ten years in length used in the analysis for product classes and product forms in the food and health&personal care categories while for product forms and brands in the cigarette category.
The results naturally divided into two parts: the performance of