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Marketing - Product Life Cycle

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Critically evaluate the product life-cycle concept. Examine potential problems with the concept. Is it a useful marketing-planning tool? And why? The life of a product has many points of similarity with the human life cycle; the product is born, grows, attains dynamic maturity, and then enters its declining years. According to Arch Patton that is what the product life-cycle concept is. The product life-cycle is a business concept that is important in marketing and it is used as a tool to analyze the demand at the industry level. The theory of the product life-cycle was introduced in the 1950s to explain the expected life cycle of a typical product from design to obsolescence. The product can go through four possible stages. Not all products make it to the final stage, some may continue to grow and some may fail. That may be so because it depends on many factors such as the products themselves, technological changes, market acceptance, economic factors and others. The first stage or the introduction as it is called, this is when research has been done, and product has been developed and launched in the market. The product may fail or be successful, it depend on the consumers and their preference. A benefit of this stage, it may be a unique product and may have minimal competition. The company will have to invest a lot of money and being a new product, the company’s profits may not be what is expected which can be seen as a drawback. A product that is a good example in the introductory stage is 3D televisions, it has been around a while, but a lot of money has been invested to make them available so they can be enjoyed in the comfort of homes. Growth is the second stage of the product life-cycle; the product reaches there once it is

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